332 TAXONOMY. 



664. No artificial classification of plants could fail to be 

 natural in some portions and some respects ; because plants 

 which agree in any point of structure likely to be used for the 

 purpose will commonly agree in other and perhaps more impor- 

 tant characters. On the other hand, no natural classification can 

 dispense with artificial helps ; nor can it express in lineal order, 

 or in any other way, all the various relationships of plants, even 

 if these were fully determined and rightly subordinated. Natu- 

 ralists now endeavor to make classification as natural as possible ; 

 that is, to base it in every grade upon real relationships. What 

 real relationships are, and how to express them in a general 

 system and throughout its parts, has been the task of the leaders 

 in botany from the beginning of the science until now ; and the 

 work is by no means completed. 



665. Linnaeus was perhaps the first botanist to distinguish 

 clearly between a natural and an artificial classification. He 

 labored ineffectually upon a natural classification of the genera 

 of plants into orders ; and he devised an effective artificial classi- 

 fication, which became so popular that it practically superseded 

 all others for more than half a century, and has left a permanent 

 impression upon the science. The last generation of botanists 

 who were trained under it has not quite passed away. 



666. Ante-Linnsean Classification. Linnaeus, in his Philosophia 

 Botanica, divided systematists into heterodox and orthodox : 

 the former, those who classify plants by their roots, herbage, time 

 of flowering, place of growth, medical and economical uses, and 

 the like ; the latter, by the organs of fructification. It is remark- 

 able that all the orthodox or scientific classifications anterior to 

 Linnaeus made a primary division of the vegetable kingdom into 

 Trees and Herbs, referring the larger shrubs to the former and 

 the under-shrubs to the latter, an arrangement which began 

 with Theophrastus and was continued by Ray and Tournefort. 



667. The three most important names in botanical taxonom} r 

 anterior to Linnaeus are those o'Cesalpini, Ray, and Tournefort. 

 Scientific botany commenced with the former, in Italy, in the 

 latter half of the sixteenth century. He first used the embryo and 

 its cotyledons in classification, distinguished differences in the in- 

 sertion of floral parts, and, indeed (excepting the primary division 

 into trees and herbs) , founded all principal characters upon the 

 organs of fructification, especially upon the fruit and seed. 

 Conrad Gesner of Zurich had somewhat earlier recognized this 

 principle, but Cesalpini first applied it. 



668. A century later (1690-99) this principle was carried into 

 practice by Rivinus (a name latinized from Bachmann), of 



