ARRANGEMENT OF PLANTS 311 



ance of the flower and fruit as affording the charac- 

 ters by which the affinities of plants were to be 

 detected ; and that he urged this view upon "his 

 contemporaries. His plates present to us, by the 

 side of each plant, its flower and its fruit, carefully 

 engraved. And in his communications with his 

 botanical correspondents, he repeatedly insists on 

 these parts. Thus 4 in 1565 he writes to Zuinger 

 concerning some foreign plants which the latter 

 possessed : " Tell me if your plants have fruit and 

 flower, as well as stalk and leaves, for those are of 

 much the greater consequence. By these three 

 marks, flower, fruit, and seed, I find that Saxi- 

 fraga and Consolida Regalis are related to Aconite." 

 These characters, derived from the fructification (as 

 the assemblage of flower and fruit is called), are 

 the means by which genera are established, and 

 hence, by the best botanists, Gessner is declared to 

 be the inventor of genera 5 . 



4 Epistolce, fol. 113 a; see also fol. 65 b. 



5 Haller, Biblio. Botanica, i. 284. Method! Botanies ratio- 

 nem primus pervidit ; dari nempe et genera quaa plures species 

 comprehenderent et classes quae multa genera. Yarias etiam 

 classes naturales expressit. Characterem in flore inque semine 

 posuit, &c. Rauwolfio Socio Epist. Wolf, p. 39. 



Linnaeus, Genera Plantarum, Pref. xiii. " A fructificatione 

 plantas distinguere in genera, infinite sapientiaa placuisse, detexit 

 posterior setas, et quidem primus, saeculi sui ornamentum, Con- 

 radus Gessnerus, uti patet ex Epistolis ejus postremis, et Tabulis 

 per Carmerarium editis." 



Cuvier says (Hist, des Sc. Nat. 2e pe. p. 193), after speaking 

 to the same effect, " II fit voir encore que toutes les plantes qui 



