THE PLANT WORLD. 
I 66 
century had built upon the foundation of Cesalpino’s idea, gave it 
unity and fashioned it into a system without introducing anything 
essentially new. 
That which gave Linnaeus so much importance for his time was 
the skillful way in which he gathered up and put together all that 
had been done before him. Linnaeus was born in 1707 at Rashult 
in Sweden; in 1741 he became professor of botany in Upsala 
where he died in 1778. We may reckon him as a student of plant 
distribution, perhaps as a plant geographer, but hardly as an 
ecologist. 
The classification of plants according to the Natural System 
was carried stilll further by the labors of Bernard de Jussieu and 
his nephew Antoine. It is the younger Jussieu’s great and abiding 
merit to have first attempted to substitute a real division of the 
whole vegetable kingdom into larger and gradually subordinate 
groups for mere enumerations of smaller coordinate groups—an 
undertaking which Linnaeus had expressly declared to be beyond 
his powers. 
About this time (1793) there appeared what was probably the 
first work dealing with the adaptations of plants, “ Das entdeckte 
Geheimniss der Natur im Ban und Befruchtung der Blumen," by 
Christian Konrad Sprengel. The purpose of the book is the 
explanation of the structure of flowers, their colors and odors. 
We find in it much of the spirit and method of Darwin but it is 
often smothered in a teleological atmosphere. Christian Konrad 
Sprengel was born in 1750 and died in 1816. While employed 
as pastor of the church at Spandau he became interested in the 
study of botany. He gradually became more and more interested 
in botany and correspondingly neglected the duties of his office. 
It is • said that the Sunday sermon was often omitted for this 
reason. He finally lost his church and went to Berlin where he 
lived in straightened circumstances, being shunned by men of 
science on account of his eccentricity. He then supported himself 
by giving instruction in languages and in botany, using his Sun¬ 
days for excursions which anyone could join—on payment of 
two or three groschen. He met with so little encouragement that 
he never brought out the second part of his famous work; his 
