Chap, ii.] * Organs from \ Cesalpino to Linnaeus. 93 



perspicuity and precision, and in copiousness of material ; and 

 indeed it would be difficult to find in the ninety years after 

 1 781 a text-book of botany which treats what was known on 

 the subject at each period with equal clearness and complete- 

 ness. In giving the reader some idea of the way in which 

 Linnaeus deals with his subject, it will be well to pass over the 

 first two chapters, which discuss the literature and the various 

 systems which had been proposed, and turn to the third, 

 which under the heading * Plantae ' treats of the general nature 

 of plants, and specially of the organs of vegetation. The 

 vegetable world, says Linnaeus, comprises seven families, 

 Fungi, Algae, Mosses, Ferns, Grasses, Palms, and Plants. All 

 are composed of three kinds of vessels, sap-vessels which 

 convey the fluids, tubes which store up the sap in their 

 cavities, and tracheae which take in air ; these statements 

 Linnaeus adopts from Malpighi and Grew. He gives no 

 characteristic marks for the Fungi ; of the Algae he says that 

 in them root, leaf, and stem are all fused together ; to the 

 Mosses he ascribes an anther without a filament, and separate 

 from the female flower which has no pistil ; the seeds of the 

 Mosses have no integument or cotyledons ; this characteristic 

 of the Mosses is explained in his paper entitled 'Semina 

 Muscorum ' in the ' Amoenitates Academicae,' ii. The Ferns 

 are marked by the fructification on the under side of the 

 fronds, which are therefore not conceived of as leaves. The 

 very simple leaves, the jointed stalk, the ' calyx glumosus,' and 

 the single seed mark the Grasses. The simple stem, the rosette 

 of leaves at the summit, and the spathe of the inflorescence 

 are characteristic of the Palms. All vegetable forms which 

 do not belong to any of the previous families he names Plants. 

 He rejects the customary division into herbs, shrubs, and trees 

 as unscientific. This arrangement of the vegetable kingdom 

 must not be confounded with Linnaeus' fragment of a natural 

 system, in which he adopts sixty-seven families (orders), the 

 Fungi, Algae, Mosses, and Ferns forming each a family. He 



