An Epitome of the History and 

 Philosophy of Botany* 



'' Opinionum commenta delet dies, naturae judicia confir- 

 mat." (Cicero.) 



In the history of mankind we observe three consecutive 

 stages of culture. In the first we find men ceaselessly en- 

 gaged in the dire struggle for the <laily wants of maintenance 

 and in self-defense until they acquire the faculty of providing 

 for regular sustenance and enter into the social state. They 

 arrive now at a state of mental co)nposure, inducing a spirit of 

 inquiry into the nearer or remoter relation of things around 

 them.and their applicability to their benefit or pleasure. Thus 

 engaged, they collect the material for the third state of their 

 education, in which they acquire a compreiiension of moral 

 law, an interpretation of the physical forces, and ultimately 

 attain to the ability to control them and make them subserv- 

 ient to their will. 



Likewise we may arrange the history of botany in three pe- 

 riods — of, however, very unequal duration, and, like the former, 

 disturbed, especially in the earlier states, by periodic fluctu- 

 ations. 



The first period embraces the whole time from the incip- 

 iency of human culture to the late periods of mediseval his- 

 tory, from Dioscorides and Theophrastus to the Bauhins 

 (1600), in which plants were nearly exclusively attended to in 

 relation to their applicability to the healing art, to agriculture 

 and horticulture, and as material for wood-work. 



The second period, beginning with Raj us and Turnefort, 

 reaches its acme in the Linnean school, and is strictly con- 

 fined to technical botany; that is, the exact description and 

 artificial systematizing. 



The beginning of the third and really scientific period lies 

 within the recollection of botanists yet living, who surveyed 

 and cooperated in the rapid ascendency of this discipline. 



In this instance plants are treated from the biologic stand- 



