CH. XXXVII. GOETHE A BOTANIST. jSi 



of living beings. And the followers of Linnaeus all over 

 the world had been collecting and sending home for com- 

 parison rare plants and animals formerly unknown, which 

 were eagerly studied for the new light they threw upon those 

 which had been already dissected and described. 



And so it came to pass that towards the end of the 

 eighteenth century men became eager not merely to examine 

 separate specimens or structures, but to form theories about 

 the living beings on the globe. They began to inquire why 

 animals should all be so much alike in their general plan, 

 and yet so different in their special characters ; why the 

 same part of the body should be made to serve for different 

 purposes in different animals, instead of a special organ being 

 provided ; as, for example, the wing of the bat, which answers 

 exactly to the front leg of a mouse, but is altered so as to 

 be used for flying instead of walking. Then again, as the 

 distribution of animals became better known, the question 

 arose why certain kinds, such as kangaroos, should be found 

 only in Australia, while they are wanting in all other parts 

 of the world. Such general questions as these began to 

 occupy the minds of naturalists, and we cannot close a 

 history of science without trying to understand something 

 of the attempts made to answer them, although they are 

 so difficult that it will require all your attention and 

 thought to understand them. 



The Poet Goethe proves the Metamorphosis or Transfor- 

 mation of Plants, 1790. — One of the first men who threw 

 any light upon the history of the growth of plants was the 

 poet Goethe. Goethe had a deep love of Nature, as may 

 be seen in many of his beautiful minor poems, and this love 

 led him in the year 1780 to devote himself to the study of 

 the anatomy of plants and animals. 



