^^] Cesaipinds System 153 



a whole. It is true that, compared with the characters 

 of the reproductive organs, the leaf-form and habit, owing 

 to their plasticity, have to be used with great discretion as 

 systematic criteria, but, nevertheless, no system of classifi- 

 cation can afford to ignore them entirely. Cesalpino based 

 his scheme too exclusively upon seed characters, to the 

 neglect even of the structure of the flower, and, curiously 

 enough, although he laid so much stress upon the nature of 

 the seed, he did not grasp the fundamental distinction 

 between the embryos of the Monocotyledons and the 

 Dicotyledons, due to the possession of one, and two seed- 

 leaves respectively. The chief drawback of his scheme, 

 however, was his failure to realise that living organisms are 

 too complex to fall into a classification based on any one 

 feature, important as that feature may prove to be when 

 used in conjunction with other characters. 



Those herbalists, on the other hand, who attacked the 

 problem of the classification of plants without any pre- 

 conceived, academic theory, depended, one might almost 

 say, on the glimmerings of common sense for the recognition 

 of affinities. This was no doubt a dim and fitful illumination, 

 but it was at least less partial than the narrow, lime-light 

 beam of a rigid theory. 



