12 HISTORY OF BOTANY 



based on agreement in medicinal virtues. " The credit 

 of having reformed the nomenclature of genera by the 

 exclusion of names made up of two distinct words has 

 been given to Linnaeus, who, in the year 1751, is thought 

 first to have laid down such a principle. But the 

 actual reform had been quietly inaugurated by Brunfels 

 220 years before Linnaeus came forward with his Philo- 

 sophia Botanica. ... To the nomenclature of species it 

 is evident Brunfels gave no thought." He held " that 

 for the science of botany there is an initial book ; that 

 is the Historia Plantarum of Theophrastus of Eresus," 

 although he borrowed his descriptions chiefly from 

 Italian authors who had attempted to identify the plants 

 named by Dioscorides with those growing in the Medi- 

 terranean region. 



Another ancient botanical worthy was Fuchs, whose 

 Historia Stirpium appeared in 1542. In it the genera 

 are arranged alphabetically and hence families are not 

 recognised at all, and " there is no evidence that an 

 interest in plants as plants rather than as drugs was ever 

 awakened in him." 



The third of the'so-called " German Fathers " of botany 

 was Bock, a contemporary of Fuchs and Brunfels ; 

 indeed it would appear that Bock wrote his herbal largely 

 at the instigation of Brunfels. While Brunfels and 

 Fuchs trusted to the plates with which their massive 

 folios were embellished for the identification of the plants 

 they described, Bock, who apparently was not over- 

 burdened with this world's goods, aimed at describing 

 plants in such a manner as to be identifiable by the 

 descriptions only, although woodcuts were afterwards 

 added. His Kreuterbuch was published in 1546 and was 

 in German, though afterwards translated into Latin. 

 His method of classification is to associate " such plants 

 as Nature seems to have hnked together by similarity 

 of form," i.e. his taxonomy is based on the vegeta- 

 tive organs only ; for, though he seems to have studied 



