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both Aristotle and Theophrastus, and he appears to have been 

 the earliest among students of plant life and form to venture the 

 opinion that all cultivated trees, shrubs, and herbs have been 

 derived from wild ones, and are susceptible of reversion to their 

 pristine condition. It is the earliest hint — and a very early one, 

 apparently unknown to the annalists of evolution — of what cul- 

 tivation may accomplish in the way of transformation. But the 

 doctrine must have had the sound of a heresy verging toward 

 atheism in the ears of a populace that had never questioned the 

 proposition that every cultivated plant and tree had been coeval 

 with the human race, and had been so created at the first." 



But the longest, by far, of the chapters of the present part of 

 the "Landmarks" is that devoted to Theophrastus of Eresus, 

 whom Linnaeus called the Father of Botany, though in later 

 years that title has sometimes, by the less discriminating, been 

 transferred to Linnaeus himself. Several pages are given to what 

 is known of the personal history of Theophrastus, including many 

 interesting details of his relations with Aristotle, his teacher, 

 patron, and devoted companion. A personal sketch of this sort, 

 by the way, accompanies the discussion of the work of each of 

 the early botanists considered in the succeeding chapters, a 

 feature that for many readers will doubtless contribute much to 

 the interest and attractiveness of the book. The botanical work 

 of Theophrastus is treated under the general headings, "Method", 

 "Vegetative Organography", Anthology", "Fruit and Seed", 

 "Anatomy", "Phytography", "Taxonomy", "Ecology", "Den- 

 drology", and "Transmutation", followed by a "Recapitulation". 

 In his studies of flowers Theophrastus recognized the centripetal 

 and centrifugal types of inflorescence, the hypogynous, perigy- 

 nous, and epigynous modes of insertion of the corolla and 

 androecium, and the fact that the "head" in the composites is a 

 flower-cluster and not a single flower. In regard to the inflores- 

 cence of composites Professor Greene remarks: "Less than three 

 generations ago, eminent systematists were still writing up the 

 scales of such involucres as 'sepals', the whole involucre as a 

 'calyx', and the circle ray flowers as the 'corolla'.' At this junc- 

 ture the sublime old Greek will appear to have lived before his 

 time by more than two thousand years." In connection with the 



