122 
BOTANY IN THE OLDEN TIME. 
It treats of Plants in general, acknowledging the services of Mr. Ray, Dr. 
Morrison, Mr. Evelyn, and others, who had taken “ very laudable pains in ad¬ 
justing the order and kindred of many species brought to light, especially na¬ 
tives of India, which the ancients, for anything that appears in their writings, 
now extant, were ignorant of. 
The second book is presented to the Right Honourable William Lord YiCount 
Brounker and the Council and Fellows of the Royal Society, prefaced by an 
address to The Right Reverend John, Lord Bishop of Chester. With some 
diffidence as to the posthumous fame of his work, the Doctor says, “ I know the 
Censures of Men are humorous and variable ; and that one Age must have 
leave to frown on those Books, which another will do nothing less than kiss 
and embrace.” He proceeds to discourse in Chap. I., Of the Seed in its State 
of Vegetation. 
1. The method propounded. 2. The Garden Bean dissected. 3, 4. The two 
Coats described. 5, 6. The foramen and the outer Coat. 7. What generally 
observable of the Covers of the Seed. 8. The Organical parts of the Seed. 
9, 10. The Main Body. 11. The radicle in the bean. 12. In other seeds. 
13,14. The Plume. 15. The similary Parts. 16,17. The Cuticle. 18,19, 20. 
The Parenchyma. 21 to 29. The Inner Body. 30. No solid account yet given 
of vegetation. 31. The Coats how in common subservient to the Vegetation 
of the Seed. 32. The Foramen, of what use herein. 33. The use of the Inner 
Coat. 34. Of the Cuticle. 35. Of Parenchyma 36. The Seminal Root. 
37. How the Radicle first becomes a Root. 38. By what means the Plume is 
all this while Preserved. 39. How after the Root the Plume vegetates. 40. 
How the lobes. 41. But not in all Seeds. 42, 43, 44. That they do in most 
demonstrated. 45. What hence resolvable. 46, to the end. The use of the 
dissimilar leaves. Nine pages are devoted to this part of the subject. “ I 
choose that method, which, to the best advantage may suit with what we may 
have to say hereon. And that is the Method of Nature herself in her continued 
series of vegetations ; proceeding from the Seed sown , to the formation of the 
Root, Trunk, Branch, Leaf, Flower , Fruit, and last of all, of the Seed also to 
be Sown again ; all-which, we shall, in the same order, particularly speak of. 
Idle Essential Constitution of the said Parts are in all Plants the same ; but for 
Observation some are more convenient; in which I shall chiefly instance. And 
first of all, for the Seed we choose the great Garden-Bean." 
He is very perspicuous on the Vest or Coat, “ which the Eye not before in¬ 
structed will judge but one, somewhat resembling Wafers under Maquaroons. 
The Foramen presents itself even to the bare Eye; it is of that capacity, as 
to admit a small Virginal Wyer.” 
Of the Radicle —“ In Corn is that Part which Maltsters upon its shooting 
forth call the come." 
The Parenchyma—Not that we are so meanly to conceive of it as if (accord¬ 
ing to the stricter sense of that word) it were a mere concreted Juyce.—For it 
is a Body very curiously organiz'd, consisting of a number of extreme small 
Bladders. 
“ The Seminal Root being so tender, cannot be perfectly excarnated, (as may 
be the vessels in the parts of an Animal) by the most accurate Hands. Yet 
what dissection cannot attain, an ocular inspection, in hundreds of other Seeds, 
even the smallest will demonstrate, as in this Chapter shall be seen how.” 
“The Plume all this while lies close and still. . . . The course of the Sap 
issues, I say, in a direct Line from the Root into the Plume, etc., and, being 
disbursed back into all the Seminal Root, and from thence, likewise into the 
Parenchyma of the Lobes, they are both thus fed, and for some time augment¬ 
ing themselves really grow ; again, the Lobes (which) did at first feed and im¬ 
pregnate the Radicle into a perfect Root; so the Root being perfected, doth 
again feed and by degrees amplifie each Lobe into a perfect leaf.” 
