58 HISTORY OF BOTANY 



years of the century were singularly barren. During 

 that period there appeared only one work of any note, 

 Gaertner's De Fructibus et Seminibus Plantarum, a 

 laborious analysis of fruits and seeds, containing a large 

 number of original observations, some of which were of 

 great importance, though neglected for many years. 

 For example, Gaertner insists that one-seeded indehiscent 

 fruits are not seeds, a fact whose significance was not 

 fully appreciated until the time of Robert Brown, forty 

 years afterwards. 



I do not intend to invite you to plunge into the meta- 

 physical speculations of the poet Goethe on the subject 

 of the metamorphosis of plant organs, where, as Sachs 

 concisely puts it, he " confounds the subjective notion 

 with the objective thing." 



Goethe's theory of the morphological equivalence of 

 appendicular organs was developed in his Versuch, die 

 Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erkldren (1790), wherein 

 he attempted to prove that there is one fundamental 

 appendicular organ, the leaf, and that all other organs are 

 modifications of it, and also that there is one funda- 

 mental plant type, the " Urpflanze," on the plan of which 

 all others are built. A perusal of the book recalls the 

 sophistries of Caesalpino and other Aristotelians, and 

 prepares us for the sterile controversies that arose some 

 years afterwards on the " spiral tendency in Nature " 

 and on the precise limits of the " individual." Un- 

 doubtedly the " doctrine of metamorphosis " made a 

 considerable impression on the minds of contemporary 

 botanists, as also on those who lived in the later years of 

 the century, but I think it is hardly worth while to spend 

 time over a treatise so metaphysical. Indeed if we are 

 to accept Schleiden's criticism we must regard Goethe's 

 contributions to the science of botany as of extremely 

 doubtful value. " The unfortunate seed which Goethe 

 sowed," he says, " sprang up with sad rapidity ; and 

 next to Schellingism, we owe it to him that, in Botany, 



