56 HISTORY OF BOTANY 



the problem. According to Linnaeus himself the highest 

 and only worthy task of a botanist is to know all the 

 species of the vegetable kingdom by name, and conse- 

 quently the goal to be aimed at by every one who was 

 ambitious of earning the title was to get to know the 

 name of a plant in the easiest and most expeditious 

 manner possible. If an unknown weed possessed five 

 stamens, all of them the same length, it belonged to the 

 class " Pentandria," and if, in addition, it had only one 

 style, it was a member of the order " Monogynia " 

 under Pentandria. It was not difficult thereafter to find 

 the genus and species from the clear diagnoses that 

 Linnaeus wrote in such a masterly manner. But a 

 knowledge of the name thus acquired gave not the 

 slightest hint as to its relationship to other plants with 

 ten or any other number of stamens and five or any other 

 number of styles, no more, in fact, than the knowledge that 

 a certain individual is named Jones and pursues the 

 occupation of a plumber in a street in Liverpool suggests 

 that he is first cousin to a person of the name of Smith 

 practising the same trade in a wynd in Edinburgh. 



Linnaeus closes a chapter, he does not open one ; he 

 writes the epilogue, not the prologue ; he summarises the 

 past but sketches no outhne of the future, save the 

 unfinished fragments in the Philosophia Botanica. The 

 chief service that he rendered to botany was to furnish 

 his successors with a solid jumping-off place whence they 

 might spring across the stream on to the further shore. 



The Beginnings of Specialisation 



We have now reached a period in the history of our 

 science when developments begin to crowd upon us ; the 

 workers are increasing in number rapidly, and they are 

 beginning more and more to specialise on definite problems, 

 for the field is becoming too wide for any one man to 

 compass. 



