NATURE 



337 



THURSDAY, AUGUST 7, 1890. 



THE HISTORY OF BOTANY. 

 History of Botany (i 530-1 860.) By Julius von Sachs. 

 Authorized Translation by H. E. F. Garnsey, M.A. 

 Revised by Prof. I, Bayley Balfour, F.R.S. (Oxford : 

 Clarendon Press, 1890.) 



A FTER fifteen years' interval, this admirable book 



.A 



has made its appearance in English. The transla- 



tion does justice to the original, and to say this is very 

 liigh praise, for the " History of Botany" is perhaps the 

 most generally interesting, and the most finished in style, 

 of all Prof. Sachs's works. 



There have been scarcely any alterations in this edition, 

 which still represents the state of the author's mind in 

 1875. To quote his words, in his preface to the present 

 translation : — 



" I came to the conclusion that my book itself may be 

 regarded as a historical fact, and that the kindly and 

 indulgent reader may even be glad to know what one, 

 who has lived wholly in the science, and taken an interest 

 in everything in it, old and new, thought from fifteen to 

 eighteen years ago of the then reigning theories, repre- 

 senting as he did the view of the majority of his fellow 

 botanists." 



The paragraph which follows must, we think, in fairness 

 be quoted, though this is done with some regret : — 



" However, these remarks relate only to two famous 

 writers on the subjects with which this history is con- 

 cerned. If the work had been brought to a close with 

 the year 1850 instead of i860, 1 should hardly have found 

 It necessary to give them so prominent a position in it. 

 Their names are Charles Darwm and Karl Nageli. I would 

 desire that whoever reads what I have written on Charles 

 Darwin in the present work should consider that it 

 contains a large infusion of youthful enthusiasm still 

 remaining from the year 1859, when the 'Origin of 

 Species' delivered us from the unlucky dogma of con- 

 stancy. Darwin's later writings have not inspired me 

 with the like feehng. So it has been with regard to 

 Nageli. He, like Hugo von Mohl, was one of the first 

 among German botanists who introduced into the study 

 that strict method of thought which had long prevailed 

 in physics, chemistry, and astronomy ; but the researches 

 of the last ten or twelve years have unfortunately shown 

 that Nageli's method has been applied to facts which, as 

 tacts, were inaccurately observed. Darwin collected 

 innumerable facts from the literature in support of an 

 idea; Nageli applied his strict logic to observations which 

 were in part untrustworthy. The services which each of 

 these men rendered to the science are still acknowledged ; 

 but my estimate of their importance for its advance would 

 differ materially at the present moment from that con- 

 tained in my ' History of Botany.' At the same time, I 

 rejoice in being able to say that I may sometimes have 

 overrated the merits of distinguished men, but have 

 never knowingly underestimated them." 



We are sorry that these words have been written. The 

 position of Darwin in biology needs no defence, even 

 when the assailant is Prof. Sachs. With regard to 

 Nageli, the case is different : but, although recent investi- 

 gation has re-opened some of the questions which he 

 appeared to have decided, we feel that here also the 

 critic's first thoughts were best, and that the estimate of 

 NO, 1084, VOL. 42] 



1875 is, in the main, more just as well as more generous 

 than that of 1889. 



A very brief sketch of the contents of the work, which 

 will already be familiar to so many botanical readers, 

 must suffice. The first of the three books into which 

 the whole work is divided is occupied with the history 

 of morphology and classification, from 1530 to i860. 

 The early efforts at classification by the German and 

 Dutch botanists of the sixteenth century are first dis- 

 cussed, and it is shown that they were already guided by 

 the perception of natural affinity— an idea which, as the 

 author says, " is not the discovery of any single botanist, 

 but is a product, and to some extent an incidental pro- 

 duct, of the practice of describing plants." But for a 

 time these necessarily feeble attempts at a natural ar- 

 rangement had to give way to artificial systems based on 

 a priori principles of classification. Of this tendency 

 Cesalpino is the first great representative, and the author 

 shows how great was the influence of this remarkable 

 man on the succeeding period of systematic botany. It 

 was Cesalpino who first founded a classification mainly 

 on the organs of fructification. 



The period inaugurated by Cesalpino culminates in 

 Linnaeus. 



" Linnaeus," says Prof. Sachs, " in whose works the 

 profound impression which he had received from Cesal- 

 pino is everywhere to be traced, retained all that was 

 important in his predecessor's views, but perceived at 

 the same time what no one before him had perceived, 

 that the method pursued by Cesalpino, Morison, Ray, 

 Tournefort, and Bachmann, could never do justice to 

 those natural affinities which it was their object to dis- 

 cover ; and that in this way only an artificial though very 

 serviceable arrangement could be attained, while the 

 exhibition of natural affinities must be sought by other 

 means" (p. 81). 



The author does full justice to the unrivalled excellence 

 of Linnaeus as a descriptive botanist, and further points 

 out that his fragment of a natural system was much the 

 most truly natural proposed up to the middle of the 

 eighteenth century. Linnaeus's famous sentence, " It is 

 not the characters which make the genus, but the genus 

 which makes the characters," shows, indeed, a remarkable 

 insight into the meaning of natural affinity. 



The development of the natural system by the two 

 Jussieus, Pyrame de Candolle, Robert Brown, and other 

 illustrious systematists is next traced. In the concluding 

 chapter of the first book there is a fine sketch of the 

 splendid work of Hofmeister in establishing the relations 

 between Cryptogams and Phanerogams, and of his posi- 

 tion relative to the theory of descent. The author says 

 (p. 202) :— 



" When Darwin's theory was given to the world 

 eight years after Hofmeister's investigations, the relations 

 of affinity between the great divisions of the vegetable 

 kingdom were so well established and so patent, that the 

 theory of descent had only to accept what genetic 

 morphology had actually brought to view." 



The subject of the second book is the history of 

 vegetable anatomy. An admirable account is given of 

 the work of the great founders of the anatomy of plants 

 in the seventeenth century, Malpighi and Grew, who 

 remained the leading authorities in this branch of science 



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