THE SCIENCE OF BOTANY 5 



a compendium of facts and fancies about living things, was 

 long a storehouse of botanical information. Dioscorides, living 

 at about the time of Nero, studied plants for their medicinal 

 properties and holds an important place historically in both 

 botany and medicine. 



The Herbalists. — After this, its classical period, botany went 

 into that profound eclipse suffered by all sciences during the 

 Middle Ages. The teachings of the ancient masters were jealously 

 preserved and were commented upon and dissected, but the 

 thought of extending knowledge by direct observation and 

 experiment was held to be almost sacrilegious. About the begin- 

 ning of the sixteenth century, however, a group of open-minded 

 men living in the Rhine valley and its adjacent regions under- 

 took to explore the plant kingdom afresh for themselves. They 

 were interested in plants chiefly for the curative virtues to be 

 found therein, and, paying scant attention to the doctrines and 

 dogmas of the ancients, they went about describing and drawing 

 with fidelity the various kinds of plants which flourished in their 

 native countries. From the numerous herb-books or "Herbals" 

 in which the resulting discoveries were published, these pioneers 

 have been known as the "Herbalists". They endeavored to 

 distinguish clearly the different species from one another, and 

 proposed certain crude methods of classifying the plant kingdom. 

 So unprejudiced and free from the conventional dogmatism of 

 the age was their whole attitude that the Herbalists are generally 

 regarded as the fathers of modern botany. 



The Modern Period.— The first extensive and thorough classi- 

 fication of plants was that proposed in 1583 b}^ the Italian 

 botanist Cesalpino (1519-1603). Combining an acquaintance 

 with the ancients and an intimate first-hand knowledge of plants, 

 he laid down certain principles which were the basis of systematic 

 botany for many years. Modern taxonomy, however, dates 

 from the publication of the "Species Plantarum" by the great 

 Swedish naturahst Linnaeus (1707-1778, Fig. 2), in 1753. In 

 this monumental book all the plant species known at that time 

 were named, carefull}^ described, and arranged according to a 

 definite sj^stcm. 



Although the earl}" work in botany was thus concerned chiefly 

 with taxonomy, the study of plant structures was not neglected 

 Grew (1628-1711) in England, and Malpighi (1628-1694) in 

 Italy, were keenly interested in the internal construction of the 



