458 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Vol. LII 



antidote for snake bites, etc. Forty-two sections of this 

 type are described by Porta, and some are fairly well 

 illustrated. Much attention is given to citing and ex- 

 plaining descriptions and names of species known to and 

 mentioned by the old authors, Pliny, Dioscoryies, Colu- 

 mella, and others, and from this particular viewpoint the 

 book is quite interesting and useful. 



But even if the greater part of this book is devoted to 

 considerations of the secret virtues of plants, some chap- 

 ters and remarks, scattered here and there, reveal the 

 indisputable talent of Porta as an observer of plant life. 

 To do full justice to this part of his work let us briefly 

 consider the status of botany in the sixteenth century. 

 It was an era of classification or attempted classification ; 

 the plants were described and arranged in some way as 

 an expression of their mutual relationship. By Bock 

 (1560) they were divided into herbs, shrubs, and trees; 

 by Clusius (1576) the system became enlarged so as to 

 comprise bulbous plants, plants with the flower fragrant 

 or inodorous, plants with milky juice, etc. The descrip- 

 tions furnished by Clusius have always been regarded 

 as most excellent, but he gave much more attention to 

 the foliar structure than to the floral; in this point of 

 view he was followed by Lobelius and Dodonseus. Cas- 

 par Bauhin (1550-1624) established a system covering 

 twelve books, and he began with the grasses and grass- 

 like plants, including Iris, Acorus, etc.; after these came 

 the bulbous plants, then those with large, edible roots, 

 etc. ; the genera were not described, only the species with 

 a number of synonyms. Bauhin was the earliest author 

 to use binary names ; but in describing the plants he did 

 not consider the structure of the flower, nor the fruit. 

 Finally Cresalpino (1583) not only established a svstem 

 principally based upon the organs of fructification," hith- 

 erto ignored, but he added a large number of new obser- 

 vations of great importance to the study of botanv. The 

 introduction to his work contains a discussion of theo- 

 retical botany in general. With regard to his classifica- 

 tion of the plants, into arborescent and herbaceous, the 



