12 PERIOD I. 



natural groups are not to be invented, but discovered. 

 The almost accidental succession adopted by Brunfels, 

 the alphabetical succession of Fuchs, the division 

 according- to uses (kitchen-herbs, coronary or garland- 

 flowers, etc.), and the logical, but too formal, method 

 of Cesalpini, in which, as in modern classification, 

 much use was made of the divisions in the ovary 

 all these were left behind. L'Obel separated, uncon- 

 sciously and imperfectly, the Monocotyledons from the 

 Dicotyledons, recognised several easily distinguished 

 families of flowering- plants (grasses, umbellifers, 

 labiates, etc.), and framed the first synoptic tables of 



genera. 



The Revival of Zoology. 



While the physicians of the Rhineland were describing 

 and figuring their native plants, the study of animals 

 began to revive. Two very different methods of work 

 were tried by the zoologists of the sixteenth century. 

 One set of men, who may be called the Encyclopaedic 

 Naturalists, were convinced that books, and especially 

 the books of the ancients, constituted the chief source of 

 information concerning animals and most other things. 

 They extracted whatever they could from Aristotle, 

 ^Elian, and Pliny, adding- all that was to be learned 

 from the narratives of recent travellers, or from the 

 collectors of skins and shells. The books on which 

 they chiefly depended, being- for the most part written 

 by men who had not grappled with practical natural 

 history and its problems, were unfortunately alto- 

 gether inadequate. Many of the statements brought 

 together by the encyclopaedic naturalists were ill- 

 attested ; some were even ridiculously improbable. If 

 inferences from the facts were attempted and this was 

 rare they were more often propositions of morality or 



