1805. | 
that time, I had to ftruggle with the moft 
cruel infirmities. I fhall, however, be 
fufficiently recompenfed for all my labours, 
fhould they induce,zhe botanifts of Eu- 
rope to employ greater accuracy in their 
generic characters, and future travellers 
not to reft fatisfied with having obtained 
fome imperfect fpecimens of plants, but 
to collect the fruits, in order to defcribe 
and delineate their different parts. Thus 
botany will arrive at a degree of perfection 
itis yet far from having attained, and which 
is the objeé&t of my molt ardent wifhes.” 
Among the manufcripts left by Gert- 
ner, there is one, the publication of which 
muft prove extremely ufeful. It is a Po- 
lyglot Dictionary atthe Names of Plants, 
which he compofed during his relidence at 
Peterfburg. No perfon could more fully 
perceive the neceflity of fuch an under- 
taking than himlelf, as he frequently com- 
plained of having fruits fent him under 
foreign names, without being informed of 
the fy{tematic name to which they fhould 
be referred, Such a work required the 
knowledge of feveral languages ; and it 
was from his early education, as well as 
the pains he always took to join to the 
ftudy of general grammar and the ancient 
languages, that of Englifh, French, Ita- 
lian, and Ruffian, that Gertner was ena- 
bled to execute it. . 
His other manufcripts are principally 
fome memoirs containing a defcription of 
a great number of zoopbytes and molluf- 
ce, and the anatomy of feveral fifhes, 
It has been already obferved, that 
Gertner opened a new career in botany ; 
and for the information of thofe who are 
not intimately acqainted with that fcience, 
it cannot be here improper to give a brief 
fketch of the object of his labours. 
Botany not having been {yftematically 
cultivated by the ancients, it is frequently 
impoffible to afcertain the plants which 
they have mentioned, and of which they 
have pointed out the virtues. When the 
neceflity of arranging vegetables was firft 
. perceived, every individual attempted a 
claffification after his own method; but, 
as the importance of diftinctive characters 
was not then duly appreciated, thefe me- 
thods, for the moft part, afforded little 
aflitance in determining the fpecies, and 
laid down no principles upon which to ef- 
tablifii the genera. 
Cefalpinus was the firft who, in 1533, 
examined the parts of the fruétification. 
He demonftrated that the fruit being the 
termination of the old, and the rudiment 
of the new, vegetable, was alfo the leaft 
variable part of it, and that irom which 
Account of Gartner the Botanift. 
549 
we might derive the beft effential character. 
Proceeding ftill farther, he diffected this 
deciduous part of the vegetable, character- 
ifed fuch as have one and two cotyledons, 
or fide lobes, under the name of one- valved 
and two-valved feeds; obferved the pofi- 
tion of the germen, relatively to the flower, 
the cells, and the partitions of the fruit, 
the form and the fituation of the embryo 
inthe feed ; from all which he was enabled 
to clafs, in a fufficiently accurate manner, 
the feven hundred and eighty plants that 
he defcribed, 
It is truly aftonifhing, that, during fuck 
a long time, no fcientific arrangement 
had been given to his obfervations, and 
that they had not been extended toa greater 
number of plants. Grew, and Malpighi, 
who made fo many refearches into the ana- 
tomy of vegetables, added very little to 
what had been difcovered by Cafalpinus 
on this fubject. © 
Tournefort eftablifhed his method on 
the fruit; and the flower, preferring how- 
ever the latter, not as being the mott im- 
portant organ, but becaule it is the moft 
apparent and moft eafily deferibed. 
Linnzus appears not to have been fuf- 
ficiently attentive to the fruit, and what- 
ever ingenuity his fyftem be allowed to 
poffefs, it certainly, for the moft part, too 
much diffevers the natural orders. 
JuMieu, on the contrary, néver neglected 
to examine the fruit, the embryo, and the 
albumen or perifperm; he was not, how- 
ever, fo accurate as might have been wifh- 
ed in his analyfis of the feed. 
Travellers, whofe objet is to collec 
herbals, negleét fruits, and are often ig- 
norant to what plants thofe belong which 
they may happen to poffefs. Rumphius, 
Kempfer, &c. were almoit the only bo- 
tanifts who, in their publications, have 
given defcriptions, and accurate figures of 
fruits; and the plates in the greateft part 
of botanical works never exhibit them in 
a ftate of maturity. 
Such was the ftate of botanical fcience 
when Gertner undertook his work. In 
an introduétion to the ftudy of the parts of 
the fruétification, which occupies one half 
of the firft volume, and on which he has 
thrown fome new light in the preface to 
the fecond, the various modes of the re- 
production of vegetables are examined, as 
well as the difference of buds, bulbs, and 
tubercles, &c. with the feeds; he diftin- 
guifhes with precifion the families that 
have true feeds from thofe which, like 
fungi, alge, conferve, &c. are multiplied 
by flips, and, as it were, by a fort of evo- 
lution, The organs concerned in the 
procels 
