PERIOD I. PREVIOUS TO 1694 5 



neighbourhood of London. He wrote many tracts on Natural History 

 subjects, and in these some lichens are included. He was one of the best 

 known of Ray's correspondents, and owing to his connection with the 

 Physic Garden received plants from naturalists in foreign countries. 



Sherard, another of Doody's friends, had studied abroad under Tournefort 

 and was full of enthusiasm for Natural Science. It was he who brought 

 Dillenius to England and finally nominated him for the position of the first 

 Sherardian Professor of Botany at Oxford. Another well-known contem- 

 porary botanist was Leonard Plukenet' who had a botanical garden at Old 

 Palace Yard, Westminster. He wrote several botanical works in which 

 lichens are included. 



Morison is the only one of all the botanists of the time who recognized 

 lichens as a group distinct from mosses, algae or liverworts, and even he 

 had very vague ideas as to their development. Malpighi^ had noted the 

 presence of soredia on the thallus of some species, and regarded them as 

 seeds. Porta', a Neapolitan, has been quoted by Krempelhuber as probably 

 the first to discover and place on record the direct growth of lichen fronds 

 from green matter on the trunks of trees. 



C. Period II. 1694- 1729 



The second Period is ushered in with the publication of a French work, 

 Les Elemens de Botanique by Tournefort*, who was one of the greatest 

 botanists of the time. His object was — "to facilitate the knowledge of plants 

 and to disentangle a science which had been neglected because it was found 

 to be full of confusion and obscurity.'' Up to this date all plants were 

 classified or listed as individual species. It was Tournefort who first 

 arranged them in groups which he designated "genera" and he gave a 

 careful diagnosis of each genus. 



Les EUmens was successful enough to warrant the publication a few 

 years later of a larger Latin edition entitled Institutiones' and thus fitted for 

 a wider circulation. Under the genus Lichen, he included plants "lacking 

 flowers but with a true cup-shaped shallow fruit, with very minute pollen or 

 seed which appeared to be subrotund under the microscope." Not only the 

 description but the figures prove that he was dealing with ascospores and 

 not merely soredia, though under Lichen along with true members of the 

 "genus" he has placed a Marchantia, the moss Splachnum and a fern. A few 

 lichens were placed by him in another genus Coralloides. 



Tournefort's system was of great service in promoting the study of 

 Botany: his method of classification was at once adopted by the German 

 writer Rupp'' who published a Flora of plants from Jena. Among these 



1 Plukenet 1691-1696. ^ Malpighi 1686. ^ Porta 1688. 



■■ Tournefort 1694. ^ Tournefort 1700. ^ Rupp 1718. 



