72 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54 



in recent botany under those same names. Such a mistake as 

 this the historian Meyer ^ must have made when he pronounced 

 the Theophrastan distinguishing between "flowering" and "flower- 

 less" to be "of little value." Its worth or wOrthlessness should 

 have been determined — in the judgment of a historian, at all events 

 — by the measure of its answerability to the state of knowledge 

 actual at the time of its promulgation, and also with reference to its 

 usefulness as an incentive to further inquiry into the nature of 

 plants as flowering and flowerless. Or, even as the historic start- 

 ing point in the designation of two groups, in name at least equiva- 

 lent to Phanerogams and Cryptogams, this Theophrastan and very 

 Suggestive expression is of deep interest, and of no small value. 



These mere outlines of his general method must be concluded 

 with the bare mention of some other aspects of the vegetable 

 kingdom as it presented itself to the comprehensive and deeply 

 thoughtful mind of the protobotanist. He discusses, and in much 

 more than mere outline, meteorology and climatology in relation 

 to plant life ; has chapter after chapter upon ecology and geographic 

 distribution, and even touches more than lightly the topics of 

 plant pathology and the transmutation of species. 



Vegetative Organography. Theophrastus begins his botany at 

 the beginning. The remark is pertinent; for with recent writers 

 it is no uncommon practice to begin somewhere toward the middle 

 of the subject, leaving the foundations of the science out. of sight. 

 It is an easy way, avoiding as it does the difficulty and the re- 

 sponsibility of laying down first principles. To recognize three 

 separate realms of nature seems necessary; yet to indicate clearly 

 the boundary lines between them is confessedly anything but 

 easy. Theophrastus at the outset acknowledged the difficulty of 

 distinguishing universally between the vegetable and animal king- 

 doms, but he faced it. There was no evasion. He addresses him- 

 self at once to the task of defining the plant as difEering from the 

 animal. And first he presents what must have been the popularly 

 accepted method of indicating the distinction, though only to show 

 its insufficiency for the purposes of science. Animals of whatever 

 description have at least a mouth and a stomach. But it can not 

 be said that all plants have roots, stems, branches, buds, leaves, 

 or fruits. To circumscribe the plant world by listing the common 

 organs of plants may enforce the exclusion of many things which 

 are neither of the animal kingdom nor of the mineral, and are there- 



- Meyer, Geschichte der Botanik, vol. i, 162. 



