Chap, ii.] from Cesalpino to Linnaeus. 63 



had already distinguished, with more care than they had pre- 

 viously received. In his theory of the seed he follows 

 Cesalpino, and adds nothing to him. 



There is nothing which more essentially distinguishes the 

 theoretical botany of Jung, and marks the advance which 

 he made upon Cesalpino's views, than the way in which he 

 discusses morphology in as entire independence as was possible 

 of all physiological questions, and therefore abstains from 

 teleological explanations. His eye is fixed on relations of 

 form only, while his mode of treating them is essentially com- 

 parative, and embraces the whole of the vegetable kingdom 

 that was known to him. Jung certainly learnt much from 

 Cesalpino ; but in rejecting at least the grosser aberrations of 

 the Aristotelian philosophy and of scholasticism, he freed him- 

 self from the prepossessions of his master, and succeeded in 

 arriving at more correct conceptions of the morphology of 

 plants. That his mathematical gifts assisted him in this respect 

 is easy to be gathered from his definitions as given above, 

 which bring into relief the symmetry apparent in the forms of 

 stems and leaves. No more profound or apt definitions were 

 supplied till Schleiden and Nageli introduced the history of 

 development into the study of morphology. 



While Cesalpino, Kaspar Bauhin, and Jung stand as soli- 

 tary forms each in his own generation, the last thirty years of 

 the 17th century are marked by the stirring activity of a 

 number of contemporary botanists. While during this period 

 physics were making rapid advances in the hands of Newton, 

 philosophy in those of Locke and Leibnitz, and the anatomy 

 and physiology of plants by the labours of Malpighi and Grew, 

 systematic botany was also being developed, though by no means 

 to the same extent or with equally profound results, by Morison, 

 Ray, Bachmann (Rivinus), and Tournefort. The works of these 

 men and of their less gifted adherents, following rapidly upon 

 or partly synchronous with each other, led to an exchange of 

 opinions and sometimes to polemical discussion, such as had 



