66 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54 



placed: root, stem, leaf, flower, fruit. Its mere orderliness pleases 

 one, even captivates the mind to that degree that one readily 

 believes that it is of both natural and logical necessity, and that 

 any single modification of that arrangement would make the whole 

 unmethodical and altogether bad. To begin at one pole of the 

 plant axis and proceed thence without a break to the opposite pole 

 is artistic, and therefore satisfies our aesthetic fancies. It may also 

 be that such procession of names of plant organs is called for by 

 scientific principle; and since our protobotanist was keenly in 

 quest of principles and a little indifferent to matters of phraseology, 

 we must inquire into his scientific reason for writing the root first 

 on the list of plant organs, rather than the stem. 



We have already seen that primevally the root received more 

 attention morphologically than any Other organ of the series ' ; that 

 early descriptive botany is rather anomalous in this particular, and 

 that all this came to pass through the influence of root-gatherers 

 and their patrons the physicians and the pharmacists. Such a 

 merely economic and commercial consideration as that which 

 influenced men of the time in their descriptions of roots can not be 

 supposed to have the least effect upon the mind of Theophrastus 

 at this particular juncture, where he is engaged upon a study that 

 is in nature purely scientific, biologic. No botanist has lived 

 in any age of the world more capable of distinguishing between 

 the economic and the biologic in nature study. Now in those parts 

 of his work which are descriptive, written for the purpose of en- 

 abling the reader to identify the plant, his sequence of the organs 

 is different. It is now stem, leaf, flower, fruit, root; another not 

 unnoteworthy item of Theophrastan method ; one sequence for the 

 treatment of organs phytographically, and another sequence for 

 the discussion of them biologically. The former is well suited 

 to its purpose; for, to the great majority of observers, nothing is 

 seen of any plant or tree but its stem, foliage, flower, and fruit; 

 and any reader would be discouraged if not repelled by a description 

 beginning with a full account of the root, about which part he 

 neither knows nor particularly cares to know anything. As to the 

 other and biological sequence, it is evident that the philosopher 

 arrived at it only after careful and prolonged investigation. " In 

 alLplantsjtiLe growth of the root precedes that of the superior 

 parts/' 2 The allusion is to young plants, whether growing from 

 seeds or from cuttings; which latter means of propagation was 



\Page 45 preceding. 

 'Hist., Book i, ch. 11. 



