LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 



207 



The ideal of Brunfelsius is high. His book is for scholars; but 

 Fuchsius plans to be more popular. He will publish twice as many- 

 plates as the former had done, and for the sake of economy must 

 reduce the number of pages of printed matter. The average is 

 not much more than a half-page to a plate; yet the descriptive 

 part of Fuchsius' volume ia not in all respects insignificant when 

 compared with that of Brunfelsius. There is a falling off in the 

 bulk of interesting and useful matter; but some good phytographic 

 distinctions are made which do not appear in Brunfelsius. 



Every chapter of Fuchsius is divided into separate and separately 

 named paragraphs, of which always the first, headed Nomina, is 

 devoted to the name and synonymy of the genus, and contains 

 nothing else. In the case of every monotypic genus the second 

 paragraph is headed Forma. In this we read always the morpho- 

 logic marks of this t jnpe ; at least such of them as Fuchsius can copy 

 out of standard authors. When, however, a generic type is known 

 to be made up of two or more species or varieties, then this morpho- 

 logic paragraph is not second in order but third; the second being 

 now given to the naming and defining of the species or varieties; 

 and this occasional second paragraph is always under the caption 

 Genera. In an earlier chapter an explanation has been given of 

 the primitive use of the term genus, and its plural genera, as 

 meaning nothing more nor less than the kind or kinds of a thing.' 

 It is plain that Fuchsius' "genera" are the species and varieties, 

 while under Forma he gives the morphology of the genus as a whole. 

 The placing of the descriptions of species and varieties first, and 

 that of the genus next below is illogical in the extreme; but there 

 are still other intimations that a logical mind was not among the 

 learned Fuchsius' natural endowments. But this segregating of 

 the morphology, the ecology, and the properties of a plant, and 

 the relegating of each to its own paragraph is definitely an improve- 

 ment in phytography, and is perhaps an invention of his own. 



Taxonomy. We are learning that there was in Fuchsius nothing 

 of the plant anatomist or physiologist, something of the organ- 

 ologist, but that he was in no wise given to philosophizings about 

 plant life and form in general; that he was a medical botanist, 

 dealing with plants from the utilitarian point of view. He would 

 not have appeared as a taxonomist had not taxonomy been in- 

 evitable wherever more than one individual plant is treated of. 



Concerning the larger and more comprehensive groups, the 



« See pages 115, 116 preceding.Xl 



