chap, ii.] from Cesalpino to Linnaeus. 41 



assumed from the first an entirely different expression in his 

 system from that which it received at the hands of de I'Obel 

 and Bauhin, inasmuch as he was not guided by an indistinct 

 feeling for resemblances, but believed that he could establish 

 on predetermined grounds a system of marks, by which the 

 objective relationship must be recognised. If Cesalpino was 

 thus in advance of the German botanists, since he endeavoured 

 to express with clearness and on principle that which they only 

 felt indistinctly, he was at the same time treading a dangerous 

 path, and one which led succeeding botanists astray till the 

 time of Linnaeus, — the path which must always lead to artificial 

 classifications, since the natural system can never be laid down 

 upon a priori principles of division. Through this labyrinth, 

 in which botanists down to Linnaeus wandered fruitlessly 

 hither and thither, there remained one guide consistently 

 pointing to the goal to be attained, namely, the feeling for 

 natural affinity first vividly apprehended by the German 

 botanists, and expressed by them to some extent in their 

 classifications. And when at last Linnaeus and Bernard de 

 Jussieu made the first feeble attempts at a natural arrangement, 

 it was the same indistinct perception which asserted itself in 

 them as in de l'Obel and Bauhin, and enabled them to see 

 that the path hitherto trodden could only lead astray. 

 i/The period in the development of descriptive botany which 

 begins with Cesalpino and reaches to Linnaeus may accordingly 

 be perhaps best characterised by saying, that botanists sought 

 to do justice to natural affinities by means of artificial classifica- 

 tions, till at length Linnaeus clearly perceived the contradiction 

 involved in this method of proceeding. But inasmuch as 

 Linnaeus left it to the future to work out the natural system, 

 and arranged the plants which he described in a confessedly 

 artificial manner, he so far marks rather the close of a previous 

 condition of the science than the beginning of modern botany. 

 These introductory observations will have supplied the 

 reader with the thread which will guide him through the 



