chap, i.] f rom Bruiifels to Kaspar Bauhin. ] 5 



Kaspar Bauhin 1 , as regards both the naming and describing of 

 individual plants and their classification according to likeness 

 of habit. In Bauhin all secondary considerations have dis- 

 appeared ; his works may be called botanical in the strict 

 scientific meaning of the word, and they show how far it is 

 possible to advance in a descriptive science without the aid of 

 a general system of comparative morphology, and how far the 

 mere perception of likeness of habit is a sufficient foundation 

 for a natural classification of plants ; it was scarcely possible to 

 make greater advances on the path pursued by the botanists of 

 Germany and the Netherlands. 



The descriptions of species in the ' Prodromus Theatri 

 Botanici ' of Kaspar Bauhin (1620) notice all obvious parts of 

 the plant with all possible brevity and in a fixed order ; the 

 form of the root, height and form of the stem, characters of the 

 leaves, flowers, fruit, and seed are given in concise sentences 

 seldom occupying more than twenty short lines ; the descrip- 

 tion of a single species is here in fact developed into an art 

 and becomes a diagnosis. 



A still higher value must be set on the fact, that in Kaspar 

 Bauhin the distinction between species and genus is fully and 

 consciously carried out ; every plant has with him a generic 

 and a specific name, and this binary nomenclature, which 

 Linnaeus is usually thought to have founded, is almost per- 

 fectly maintained by Bauhin, especially in the ' Pinax '; it is 

 true that a third and fourth word is not unfrequently appended 

 to the second, the specific name, but this additional word is 

 evidently only an auxiliary. It is remarkable on the other 

 hand, that he has added no characters to the names of the 



1 Kaspar Bauhin was born at Basle in 1550, and like his elder brother 

 John studied under Fuchs ; he collected plants in Switzerland, Italy, and 

 France, and became professor in Basle ; he died in 1624. Some account is 

 given of him and of his brother by Haller in the preface to his ' Historia 

 Stirpium Helvetiae ' (1768), and by Sprengel in his ' Geschichte der 

 Botanik,' i. p. 364 (181S). 



D 



