38 THE NEW BIOLOGY 



the seedless plants, which are imperfect, bred of putre- 

 faction, and intermediate between plants and inanimate 

 things, are separated from the more perfect plants. 

 Then he arranges his flowering herbs by the number 

 of divisions of the seed-vessel, but uses also, without 

 strict subordination, other characters, such as the 

 superior or inferior ovary and the position of the 

 embryo in the seed. These characters, which have 

 proved valuable to later systematists, are not always 

 employed with knowledge. Cesalpini confuses divisions 

 of the ovary with seeds, or even with flowers ; he has 

 no conception of any such morphological unit as the 

 carpel of modern botany ; and his brief characters 

 drawn from the embryo^ are sometimes unintelligible, 

 all the more because neither figures nor synoptic tables 

 are supplied. The student finds himself compelled at 

 length to depend chiefly on the illustrative genera cited. 

 Thus judged, Cesalpini will be found to have made no 

 addition to the short list of truly natural families 

 already recognised by L'Obel. Instead of increasing the 

 number he destroyed or spoilt some necessary groups, 

 leaving only the Umbelliferse intact. ■ Cesalpini stood 

 aloof from all the botanists of his time, whom he never 

 quotes, and they paid no attention to him. Eeftelius 

 in the Amoenitates AcademiccB (who is only a cloak for 

 Linnseus) says truly that Cesalpini dwelt alone in the 

 house which he had built. 



Cesalpini offers here and there good observations 

 on the biology of plants. He remarks ^ that ants gnaw 

 the embryos of grains of corn, to hinder them from 

 sprouting when stored underground. He tells how 



1 It is possible that Cesalpini got the hint of them from Theophrastus. 



2^1ian, De nat. animcdium, II, 25, may have guided Cesalpini in this 

 passage. 



