6 TRANSACTIONS LIVEEPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



of Botany in the University of Pisa. Not content with 

 mere analysis and observation, Caesalpino brought to the 

 study of plants an intimate acquaintance with Aristotelian 

 philosophy, and his works teem with theoretical discuss- 

 ions on the seat of the soul in plants, the doctrine of 

 metamorphosis and such like products of scholasticism. 

 His classification is based not upon deduction from 

 observed natural phenomena but on philosophic abstrac- 

 tion and reasoning on the nature of plants, and the 

 relative value of their various parts. In this respect 

 Caesalpino sounded a theme on which his successors played 

 variations for more than a hundred years until Linnaeus 

 brought the concerto to a finale in the Sy sterna Natures. 

 In justice to Linnaeus one must bear in mind that he 

 himself proposed his artificial system avowedly as pro- 

 visional ; that that system should have been obstinately 

 not to say pugnaciously adhered to by his followers for 

 well nigh a century after its illustrious author had passed 

 away, and that his own suggestive speculations as to the 

 true principles of classification, given to the world in 

 the Philosophia Botanica, should have been almostly 

 completely ignored, is due to the blind reverence with 

 which his disciples regarded one who had accomplished 

 what we must recognise as a colossal task. 



Long before the second revival of Botany, which took 

 place at the beginning of the 18th century, travellers like 

 Clusius and Albini had lifted the veil from a new world 

 of plant life, and anatomists like Malpighi and Grew, with 

 their new found microscopes were endeavouring to unravel 

 the mysterious histological complex that these instruments 

 revealed not only in the phanerogamic world but in the 

 hitherto untrodden field of cryptogamic Botany, wherein 

 Micheli and Dillenius stand out prominently as pioneers. 



The last days of the 17th and early days of the 18th 



