122 SCIENCE OF GARDENING. Part II. 



of botanical arrangement." Ventenat has lately published a commentary on the writings 

 of A. L. Jussieu ; and this author himself is now publishing a Species Plantarum, arranged 

 according to his method. Professor Decandolle, of Geneva, considered one of the first 

 French botanists, is also a follower of this system, in which he has made some improve- 

 ments {Theorie de la Botanique, 1817), and he also is occupied with a Species Plantarum, 

 arranged according to his own improvements. 



552. Botanical geography, or the knowledge of the places where plants grow (habita- 

 tiones plantarum), and the causes which influence their distribution over the globe, was 

 totally neglected by the ancients. Clusius is the only botanist who before the eighteenth 

 century took any pains to indicate the native countries of plants. Bauhin and Tournefort 

 often neglected it. Linnams is the first who gave the idea of indicating it in general 

 works on botany, and his Floras of Sweden and Lapland are models of their kind in this 

 respect. Since this period many excellent Floras have appeared, among which the Flora 

 Britannica, by Sir J. E. Smith, and the Flore Franqaise, by Professor Decandolle, may 

 be mentioned as examples. The first grand effort at generalising the subject, was made 

 by Humboldt, in his Essai sur la Geographie des Plants, &c. 1811. This essay is rich in 

 facts, and filled, like all the works of this philosopher, with new and ingenious views of 

 nature. In a subsequent work, De Distributione Plantarum, 1815, he has more especially 

 examined the influence of elevation of surface on vegetation. Professor Decandolle, has 

 also given some views relatively to the subject, in his Flore Franqaise, and R. Brown, 

 one of the first botanists in this country, in Remarks on the Botany of Terra Australis, and 

 on the Plants of Congo. On the whole, however, this branch of botany, the most import- 

 ant for agriculture and gardening, and without some knowledge of which, naturalisation, 

 and even culture, must go on by mere hazard, may be regarded as still in its infancy. 



553. With respect to applied botany, its history would involve that of medicine, agricul- 

 ture, gardening, and other mixed and mechanical arts. Plants, it may be observed, have in 

 every age but the present, formed the chief articles of the materia medica of all countries. 

 At present the mineral kingdom is chiefly resorted to by the practitioners of the healing 

 art in Europe ; but plants retain their ground in other countries ; and fashion, which en- 

 ters into every thing, may change, after exercising a certain degree of influence. The 

 universal use of the vegetable kingdom in the dietetics of every country ; in the arts of 

 clothing, architecture, and, in short, in almost every branch of industry, need not be en- 

 larged on. 



554. Fossil botany, as studied from the impressions of plants found in the secondary 

 strata of the earth, has only lately begun to attract attention ; but the essays of Schlot- 

 heim, Knorr, Martius, Faujas de St. Fond, and Parkinson's Essay on Organic Remains, 

 deserve to be mentioned. 



Chap. II. 

 Glossology, or the Names of the Parts of Plants. 



555. All the arts and sciences require to express, with brevity and perspicuity, a crowd of 

 ideas unused in common language, and unknown to the greater part of men. Whence that 

 multitude of terms, or technical turns, given to ordinary words which the public turn 

 often into ridicule, because they do not feel the use of them, but which all those are 

 obliged to make use of, who apply themselves to any study whatever. Botany having to 

 describe an immense number of beings, and each of these beings having a great variety of 

 organs, requires a great variety of terms. Nearly all botanists are agreed as to these 

 terms ; and in order that they may be universally understood and remain unchanged in 

 meaning, they are taken from a dead or fixed language. 



556. A plant injlower, surveyed externally, may be perceived to be composed of a variety 

 of obvious parts, such as the root, the stem, the branch, the leaf, the flower, the fruit, and 

 perhaps the seed ; and^ther parts less obvious, as buds, prickles, tendrils, hairs, glands, 

 &c. These, with their modifications, and all the relative circumstances which enter into 

 the botanical description of a plant, form the subject of glossology, the details of which, 

 involving the definition of some hundreds of terms, are here omitted ; because to those 

 conversant with them it would be of little use, and those who have them still to learn will 

 find it more convenient to have recourse to some elementary work, where most of them 

 are illustrated by figures. (See Smith's Introduction to Botany, Grammar of Botany, 

 and similar works.) 



