THE HERBALISTS 17 



and speaks of them as forming an involucre. The calyx 

 is distinguished from the corolla by position if not by name, 

 and he unites ovary, stamens, and petals under one term — 

 flower — for the sepals were not added till long afterwards. 

 He appreciated clearly that the fig was an inflorescence, 

 though Linnaeus, more than two centuries later, regarded 

 the fig as a Cryptogam ! He watched the periodic move- 

 ments of leaves and the circumnutation of twining plants. 

 He was the first to draw attention to the pecuUar habits of 

 the Sundew, and students of the physiology of nutrition will 

 find in his pages the first mention of the tubercles on the 

 roots of Leguminosae. How a fern multiplied had always 

 been a puzzle to the ancients, but Cordus has no doubts 

 about the process. "Trichomanes grows abundantly on 

 moist shaded rocks, although it produces no stem or flower 

 or seed. It reproduces itself by means of the dust that 

 is developed on the backs of the leaves, as do all kinds of 

 ferns ; and let this statement of the fact once for all suffice." 



Time will not permit of any further analysis of the 

 achievements of this youthful botanical genius, but 

 perhaps I have said enough to convince you that he is 

 deserving of much more attention and commendation than 

 is accorded to him in the chief history of botany available 

 to you. 



Summarising what we have learnt thus far, we see 

 that scientific botany was founded three centuries B.C. 

 by Theophrastus. Nearly four hundred years after him 

 came the Greek physician Dioscorides, who regarded 

 plants primarily as sources of materia medica, and one 

 hundred years later still, Galen, who was also a pharmacist 

 and even less of a botanist than Dioscorides. Then 

 follows a gap of fourteen centuries till we meet with 

 Brunfels and Fuchs, who did little more than rewrite 

 Dioscorides and add more or less accurate pictorial 

 representations to the text, and Bock, who, because he 

 could not afford the expensive illustrations produced by 

 his two wealthy contemporaries, tried to describe with 



