LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 



95 



know that he has been carrying on research in this direction, and 

 has been able to make this fair beginning at discriminating the 

 different modes of placentation. 



The foundations of the whole philosophy of higher plant life and 

 form center in — are concentrated within, if one may so speak — 

 the seed. In botany no less than in zoology is embryology indis- 

 pensable to a right understanding of the interrelations of things. 

 From the minuteness of his researches into the structure of seeds 

 and the behavior of seedlings, it almost seems as if Theophrastus 

 may have realized this fact. He records many observations on 

 them in all, even their most familiar aspects, not neglecting the 

 diversity of them as to form and coloring. ^ In a few terse sentences 

 he gives the results of what may have been years of investigation 

 in his botanic garden, upon the subject of the different periods 

 of time required by the seeds of difEerent plants for their germina- 

 tion. " Ocimum, blitum, eruca, and radish are most prompt of 

 all, for they come up on about the third day after the sowing; 

 lettuce on the fourth day; cucumber and squash on the fifth or 

 sixth; anise on the fourth, pepper-grass and mustard on the fifth; 

 beets sown in the spring, on the sixth, in the fall, on the tenth day, 

 orache on the eighth, cabbage on the tenth." Leek and shallot are 

 such close congeners that he evidently expected they would agree 

 as to the time required for their germination, but he finds the seed 

 of shallot coming up at the end of from ten to twelve days while 

 that of the leek takes nineteen or twenty. More than thirty days 

 must be allowed, he says, either satureia or origanum, and forty 

 for celery. After long experience he finds it remarkable that the 

 most favorable conditions as to the season of the year and the state 

 of the atmosphere do not shorten the usual time required for the 

 germination of any kind of seed, though a cold atmosphere, con- 

 curring with clouded skies retards it.^ 



These studies in seeds and seedling plants, though by chance 

 interesting and instructive to the gardeners of his time, are essen- 

 tially those of a great botanical philosopher, with whom not the 

 smallest fact relating to plant life is held unworthy to be placed 

 on record. And as he proceeds, the twentieth-century botanist 

 will be apt to read with amazement a passage like the following 

 as occurring in Theophrastus. "Some seeds in germinating put 

 forth their primary root and leaf from one and the same point; 

 others, the root from one end and the leaf from the other. "' Pre- 



> Hist Book vii, ch. 3. '" ' ' ' ' Ibid., ch. l. 



' Hist., Book viii, ch. 2. 



