CH. ix. THE FIRST CLASSIFICATION OF PLANTS. 69 



died before he was forty-nine, he became the first botanist 

 and zoologist of his time, and left remarkably large and 

 valuable works behind him. He was one of the bright 

 examples of what may be done by a true desire for know- 

 ledge, and a humble, honest, loving nature ; for while he 

 helped others, he could never have accomplished what he 

 did in zoology and botany if he had not made friends all 

 over the world, who were ready to send him information 

 whenever and wherever they were able. 



First Classification of Plants by Csesalpinus, 1583. 

 Nearly thirty years after Gesner's death, Dr. Andrew 

 Csesalpinus, a physician and Professor of Botany at Padua, 

 first tried to carry out his system of grouping plants accord- 

 ing to their seeds. He began by dividing plants into trees 

 and herbs, as Theophrastus had done (see p. 17). Then he 

 divided the trees into two classes ist, those which have 

 the germ at the end of the seed farthest from the stalk, as 

 in the walnut, where you will find a little thing shaped like 

 a tiny heart lying just at the pointed end ; 2d, those which 

 have the germ at the end of the seed which is nearest the 

 stalk, as in the apple. The herbs he divided into thirteen 

 classes, according to the number of their seeds and the way 

 in which they are arranged in the seed-vessels. Some plants, 

 for example, have a single pod or seed-vessel, with a number 

 of seeds inside it, as our common pea ; others, like the 

 poppy, have a seed-vessel divided into a number of little 

 cells, each filled with seeds. 



By grouping together all the plants which had the same 

 kind of seed-vessel, Caesalpinus made thirteen classes, and 

 formed a system of plants which would have been a great 

 help to botanists, and would soon have led them to make 

 better systems if they had followed it ; but it was not gene- 

 rally adopted, and for nearly a hundred years longer many 



