PEESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 5 



one learns to expect that a long patient and apparently 

 purposeless accumulation of data often finds at last its 

 justification and its fulfilment in the sudden and brilliant 

 discovery of one or more grand natural laws. It is 

 somewhat remarkable therefore that the idea of natural 

 affinity arose only incidentally in the process of cataloguing 

 and describing plants and was, even by those who first 

 felt it, looked upon as of quite secondary importance. 

 Almost, one might say without conscious intention, but 

 yet, as we now see, by a very natural association of ideas, 

 the writers of the later herbals, for instance Bock, Fuchs, 

 and Brunfels, described successively plants which had an 

 obvious family likeness to each other. A most important 

 step was thus gained and one which led quite easily and 

 naturally to the deliberate subordination of the question 

 of pharmaceutical utility and to the elevation to first rank 

 of the study of plant relationship and of the morphological 

 features on which that principle was based. To Kaspar 

 Bauhin belongs the credit of first clearly recognising this 

 principle and of emphasising it in his works. To this 

 botanist and not to Linnaeus we are indebted for the 

 first appreciation of the value of generic and specific names : 

 he it was who first made use of the binary system of 

 nomenclature in describing living objects. Grotesque as 

 his classification may seem to students of these later days, 

 still in Bauhin's Pinax and in the Prodromus Theatri 

 Botanici we meet for the first time an attempt at grouping 

 plants in accordance with natural affinity, not merely at 

 cataloguing in alphabetical order. Bauhin was born at 

 Bale in 1550 and died in 1624, and the period of his life 

 may be said to include the date of the nativity of Botany 

 as a Science. 



Another great name of the 16th Century that stands 

 out preeminently is that of Andraea Caosalpino, Professor 



