6 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LIII. No. 1358 



vation. Theopkrastus and Pliny both made 

 some ecological observations which were des- 

 tined to play an important part in investiga- 

 tions of the future. 



WHAT THESE MEN OBSERVED 



Let us frankly recognize the service these 

 men rendered to increase our knowledge of 

 plants. The plant pathology of these earlier 

 writers was primitive of course and the plant 

 pathologist of to-day would hardly class this 

 early work under that term. This knowledge 

 of the ancients was buried for centuries, in 

 which little attention was given to botany or 

 related subjects, but we may feel sure that 

 during the " Dark Ages " man was intensely 

 interested in the economic phases of botany 

 although we have little written evidence of 

 such interest. Botanists of long ago paid 

 some attention to medical botany. We need 

 only recall that such treatises as Gerard's 

 " Herbal " and later the painstaking work of 

 Hayne, " Die Arzneigewashse," Rafinesque, 

 "Medical Flora," and many others of the old 

 writers up to the modern work of Millspaugh, 

 " American Medical Plants," Kraemer, " Phar- 

 macognosy," and Luerssen, " Handbueh der 

 Systematischen Botanik," have kept us up 

 with the times. 



We know that the Crusaders brought from 

 Asia and eastern Europe medicinal plants, 

 cereals and fruits that made possible the 

 highest type of civilization, for improved 

 plants accompanied a revival of learning. We 

 may be sure that during this epoch the eco- 

 nomic phases of plants were studied because 

 of the importance of increasing the food 

 supply. The knowledge gleaned was passed on 

 to the next generation to be of some use to 

 man, and followed by the work of others who 

 for the most part were observers, and our sci- 

 ence, it must be said, began in observation. 

 Men like Robert Morison, a close student of 

 Cesalpino, Kasper Bauhin and others, added 

 a little to the knowledge of previous botanists. 

 John Ray and Francis Willoughby became in- 

 terested in another phase of economic botany; 

 they conducted experiments on the motion of 

 sap in trees. Ray was generous to his prede- 



cessors like Grew, Jung and Malpighi. The 

 old myth that wheat will degenerate in chess 

 probably started with Ray, because he pub- 

 lished a statement that Triticum could be 

 changed into Lolium. Malpighi, the father of 

 microscopical anatomy, gave a fair account of 

 the structure of plants, including the ducts 

 and the Malpighian cell. Economic plants al- 

 ways received special attention. 



The English philosopher, Robert Hook, gave 

 a fair account of cork, which he had studied 

 with his improved compound microscope. He 

 investigated the nature of food of plants. 



Grew, in his " Anatomy of Plants," out- 

 lines in a masterly way the architecture of 

 plants, interwoven however with the philo- 

 sophical and theological prejudices of the 

 time. 



Bachman, who was a botanist, physiologist, 

 pharmacologist and chemist, appreciated mor- 

 phology and taxonomy. He introduced bi- 

 nomial nomenclature, and the reason given by 

 him was that a prescription could be written 

 easier. Think of it, that we as botanists are 

 indebted to medicine for the naming of plants. 

 Bachman refused to recognize cultivated vari- 

 eties as species. Tournefort had only to go a 

 step to recognize genera which he did in a 

 splendid way. The last link in the chain of 

 the botanists who were influenced by the older 

 school was Linnaeus, who borrowed from his 

 predecessors like Cesalpino, Jung, Bachman 

 and others, but always with fulsome praise of 

 the work of his contemporaries and prede- 

 cessors. 



Sachs says: 

 ■ We are astonished to see the long known 

 thoughts of these writers (Bauhin, Cesalpino, 

 Jung), which in their own place look important 

 and incomplete, fashioned by Linnjeus into a liv- 

 ing whole; thus he is at once and in the best sense 

 receptive and productive. 



Linnaeus thought it important to know all 

 species of plants. His " Philosophica Botan- 

 ioa " was a splendid text-book of botany. 

 There was nothing else like it for more than 

 a generation, at least there was nothing that 

 equalled it in clearness and completeness. He 



