306 



CHAPTER III. 



FORMATION OF A SYSTEM OF ARRANGEMENT OF 

 PLANTS. 



Sect. 1. Prelude to the Epoch of Ccesalpinus. 



THE arrangement of plants in the earliest works 

 was either arbitrary, or according to their use, 

 or some other extraneous circumstance, as in Pliny. 

 This, and the division of vegetables by Dioscorides 

 into aromatic, alimentary, medicinal, vinous, is, as 

 will be easily seen, a merely casual distribution. 

 The Arabian writers, and those of the middle ages, 

 showed still more clearly their insensibility to the 

 nature of system, by adopting an alphabetical ar- 

 rangement ; which was employed also in the Her- 

 bals of the sixteenth century. Brunfels, as we have 

 said, adopted no principle of order : nor did his 

 successor, Fuchs. Yet the latter writer urged his 

 countrymen to put aside their Arabian and bar- 

 barous Latin doctors, and to observe the vegetable 

 kingdom for themselves ; and himself set the ex- 

 ample of doing this, examined plants with zeal and 

 accuracy, and made above fifteen hundred drawings 

 of them 1 . 



The difficulty of representing plants in any useful 



1 His Historia Stirpium was published at Basil in 1542. 



