ARRANGEMENT OF PLANTS. 307 



way by means of drawings, is greater, perhaps, than 

 it at first appears. So long as no distinction was 

 made of the importance of different organs of the 

 plant, a picture representing merely the obvious 

 general appearance and larger parts, was of com- 

 paratively small value. Hence we are not to wonder 

 at the slighting manner in which Pliny speaks of 

 such records. "Those who gave such pictures of 

 plants," he says, " Crateuas, Dionysius, Metrodorus, 

 have shown nothing clearly, except the difficulty of 

 their undertaking. A picture may be mistaken, 

 and is changed and disfigured by copyists ; and, 

 without these imperfections, it is not enough to 

 represent the plant in one state, since it has four 

 different aspects in the four seasons of the year." 



The diffusion of the habit of exact drawing, 

 especially among the countrymen of Albert Durer 

 and Lucas Cranach, and the invention of wood-cuts 

 and copper-plates, remedied some of these defects. 

 Moreover, the conviction gradually arose in men's 

 minds that the structure of the flower and the fruit 

 are the most important circumstances in fixing the 

 identity of the plant. Theophrastus speaks with 

 precision of the organs which he describes, but 

 these are principally the leaves, roots, and stems. 

 Fuchs uses the term apices for the anthers, and 

 gluma for the blossom of grasses, thus showing that 

 he had noticed these parts as generally present. 



In the next writer whom we have to mention, 

 we find some traces of a perception of the real 



X2 



