104 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. $4 



purposes of description may best be shown by quoting a few 

 examples. A wild elm tree that inhabits the mountain, districts 

 he says has "leaves like those of the pear tree, but longer in pro- 

 portion, with serrated margin, and a rough rather than smooth 

 surface."' This makes it plain that Theophrastus' first purpose 

 in choosing leaf types was that of imparting ideas of general out- 

 line. To begin the account of an elm leaf by affirming it to be like 

 that of a pear tree is awkward and even mischievous, upon any 

 other supposition than that by such phrase he alludes to size and 

 general circumscription only; which also the expressions im- 

 mediately succeeding prove; for he who had pictured in his mind 

 at first a pear leaf for an elm leaf must now proceed, under direction 

 of the describer, to alter it by giving it a very distinctly saw- 

 toothed margin, and after that a roughness of surface, of which 

 there is no trace upon the pear leaf. What he now sees mentally 

 as a leaf of the little known wild elm is like a pear leaf in nothing 

 save its general contour. The elder tree, Sambucus nigra, Theo- 

 phrastus seems to have taken pleasure in describing rather minutely, 

 although the tree was no rarity, but rather familiarly known. But 

 it seems to have been this which taught him the existence of such a 

 thing as a compound leaf; and he gives a particular account of the 

 species from root to fruit. When he comes to the lanceolate 

 individual leaflet he says it is like the leaf of the sweet bay but 

 larger, relatively wider in the middle and at base, more pointed 

 at summit, serrated all-around, and the whole more soft and pliable 

 in texture. 2 To one acquainted with the sweet bay and the elder, 

 I do not know where, in even the most recent botany, he will find 

 a more complete description of the elder leaflet. The leaves of 

 maples, mostly wildwood trees and less familiarly known, are com- 

 pared with those of the omnipresent plane. The maple leaves are 

 also ample, cleft somewhat after the same manner, but not to the 

 middle as in the plane, Platanus orientalis, longer in proportion to 

 their breadth, of a more delicate texture, and not rough to the 

 touch. 2 



This system of leaf describing by comparison with types is both 

 natural and not ill adapted to the purposes of phytography. Had 

 it not been so it would not have remained in vogue for two thousand 

 years after Theophrastus. Greek authors after him, as well as 

 Pliny and other Latin writers, knew no other method of leaf 



> Hist., Book iii, ch. 13. 

 1 1bid., Book i, ch. 13. 

 ' Ibid., Book iii, ch. n. 



