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 THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 
 
 
 NOTES ON THE HISTORY OF BOTANY. 
 
 M A'ead before the Hamilton Associalion^ March ij, i8go. • 
 
 BY T. J. W. BURGESS, M. B , F. R. S. C, ETC. 
 
 My contribution for your consideration this evening, entitled 
 " Notes on the History of Botany," is indeed but a few brief notes 
 on the subject. To prepare anything like a complete history of this 
 charming science, is a task far beyond my ability, and, even were I 
 able to execute it, so extensive is the subject that the listening to it 
 would occupy, not an hour or two, but night after night of your 
 valuable time. 
 
 In every age, in every clime, flowers have ever been regarded 
 as among the most beautiful of the varied works of creation. Scarce 
 a poet but has sung of their beauties — not an artist but has 
 attempted to depict their gorgeous colorings. The sculptor and the 
 architect have sought to render them imperishable in stone, and 
 novelists have woven some of their tenderest fancies about them. 
 Who has not read that sweetest of stories, ** Picciola ?" How the 
 leaves of the little flowret, stretching themselves between the harsh 
 prison stones, carried a message of truth and beauty, spoke of mercy 
 and grace, to a despairing soul. Flowers are entwined about our 
 lives, and from the earliest times they have beer, represented in the 
 social and religious ceremonies of most countries. Children greet 
 them with shouts of joy ; to the bride they are a fitting emblem 
 of a happy future ; and at the tomb kind friends deposit them on 
 the bodies of departed loved ones. Numberless are the lessons to 
 be learned from these l)eautifiers of the earth, which smile alike upon 
 the peasant and the peer, which blooin equally for the abode of 
 poverty and the home of unlimited luxury. Every herb, ever shrub, 
 every tree is full of interest ; not a plant but has some peculiar 
 beauty or some exquisite adaptation. 
 
 " Your voiceless lips, O Flowers ! are living preachers, 
 Each cup a pulpit, every leaf a hook, 
 Supplying to my fancy numerous teachers 
 From lonliest nook." 
 
 / 
 
36 
 
 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 
 
 So sang the poet Horace Smith, and not less sweetly or truth- 
 fully did the Scotish minstrel, Allan Cunningham, write : 
 
 "There is a lesson in each flower, 
 A story in each stream and bower ; 
 In every herb on which we tread 
 Are written words which, rightly read. 
 Will lead you from earth's fragrant sod 
 To hope, and holiness, and God." 
 
 Viewed even by the critical eye of science, Botany presents 
 many attractions unknown to the other branches of Natural History, 
 and well deserves the appellation of our French cousins, " la belle 
 science." To the history of this most charming of studies I would 
 novf call your attention. 
 
 Botany, derived from a Greek word meaning a plant, is the 
 natural history of the vegetable kingdom. In its widest sense it em- 
 braces everything respecting plants — their nature, their kind, the laws 
 which govern them, and the uses to which they may be applied in 
 medicine, chemistry, or the arts in general. As, however, their 
 medical virtues fall most properly under the province of the physician, 
 their chemical properties under that of the chemist, and their vari- 
 ous other qualities, beneficent or otherwise, under different de- 
 partments of the scientific world, it is commonly restricted to a 
 knowledge of the- plants themselves, their mode of growth, their 
 anatomical and physiological phenomena, and those characteristic 
 marks by which the various species may be distinguished from one 
 another. It is only within comparatively recent years that, in this 
 sense, the science of botany has been developed, ils great misfortune 
 having been that, from its very inception, it was looked upon merely 
 as an adjunct to medicine. This was the reason why our ancestors 
 sought only for healing virtues in plants, whilst a knowledge of the 
 plants themselves was totally neglected. Botany, as a study, was 
 nothing, and those among the ancients, who prided themselves most 
 on their acquaintance with plants, had no idea of their structure or 
 the relation borne by one class to another. They knew, perhaps, 
 by sight a few of the plants of their own neighborhood, to which they 
 gave names at random, and to which they attributed wonderful 
 virtues from some fancied good resulting from their use in various 
 ways. These same plants had different names in every state and 
 country then known, and those who adopted them in their pank:eas, 
 
 at most ga^ 
 
 in their ov 
 
 given to th 
 
 The confusi( 
 
 imagined. 
 
 longer know 
 
 the mixture 
 
 after his ow 
 
 name, so th 
 
 A relic ot 
 
 cases we ha' 
 
 diverse, a n 
 
 ai!ixed to al 
 
 orders. F< 
 
 Spring-Beat 
 
 c/iier Canaa 
 
 fact which 
 
 what plant 
 
 Probably, a 
 
 to have be 
 
 nomenclatu 
 
 conununica 
 
 result was 
 
 names, evei 
 
 the disput: 
 
 really refen 
 
 Not o 
 
 earliest bo' 
 
 imaginatioi 
 
 slight virtu 
 
 most likely 
 
 for (juacks 
 
 their reasc 
 
 deceptions 
 
 handed dc 
 
 ophy, are 
 
 that a ma 
 
 \/hich he 
 
 plani, the 
 
THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 37 
 
 at most gave them only the name by ^hich they were known 
 in their own immediate vicinity. A dozen names were often 
 given to the same plant, and the same name to a dozen plants. 
 The confusion resulting from this arbitrary bestowal of names can be 
 imagined. When a recipe travelled into a new locality it was no 
 longer known what plants composed it. Everybody substituted in 
 the mixture or ointment, as the case might be, another plant 
 after his own fancy, but, to keep up the sale of it, gave it the same 
 name, so that in a short time all trace of the original plant was lost. 
 A relic ot this barbarism remains even to this day in the numerous 
 cases we have of the same common name applied to plants the most 
 diverse, a notable instance of which exists in the term Mayflower, 
 affixed to at least half a dozen different plants in as many different 
 orders. For example, the Trailing Arbutus (Epigcea reptns)^ the 
 Spring-Beauty (Clayionia Vhginica), and the June-Berry (Amelan- 
 chier Canadensis)^ are all known by this title in different localities, a 
 fact which has tied to no little disputation in the effort to establish 
 what plant was originally so called by the New England Loyalists. 
 Probably, at this period,* some good observations, which deserved not 
 to have been forgotten, were made, but, amid 3uch a chaos of 
 nomenclature, those who made them had no possible means of 
 communicating or recording them in a recognizable style. I'he 
 result was that there followed endless disputes upon words and 
 names, every useful enquiry and description being lost for want of 
 the disputants being able to decide what plant each observer, had 
 really referred to. • 
 
 Not content with such a mixing of names and terms, tiiise 
 earliest botanists, or more properly herbalists, drew largely on their 
 imagination for properties in plants, or greatly exaggerated any 
 slight virtue they actually possessed. Their object in this was, 
 most likely, the filling of their pockets at the expense of their dopes, 
 for (]uacks existed in those days as well as in our own. However, be 
 their reason what it might, the fact remains that, through such 
 deceptions, many marvellous beliefs about plants arose and were 
 handed down. Most of these, viewed in the light uf modern philos- 
 ophy, are truly laughable. Thus, Xanthius, the historian, tells us 
 that a man killed by a dragon can be restored to life by a herb, 
 \/hich he calls balin^ and Democritus gravely asserts that there is a 
 plant, the juice of which applied to a wedge will cause it to 
 
 I'- 
 
38 
 
 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINC.S 
 
 Spring out of the tre^ into which it has heen driven. Again, 
 
 Vitruvius, speaking of the virtues of Spleenwort (Ceterach OjD'icin- 
 
 arum) as regards its reputed action on the spleen, says that in the 
 
 island of Crete, on the side toward Cortyna, the flocks and herds 
 
 were found without spleens because they browsed on this herb, while 
 
 on the other side, toward Gnosus, they had spleens because it did 
 
 not grow there. Such superstitions continued through the days of 
 
 the Roman Empire, were very prevalent during the middle ages, and 
 
 remnants of them still exist, especially in country districts. How 
 
 fixed was the belief in the magical properties of certain plants, may 
 
 be judged from the following lines by Virgil, written, not in a strain ' 
 
 of poetic, fervid imagination, but of sober earnest : 
 
 "These poisonous plants, for magic use designed, 
 ^ (The noblest and the best of all the baneful kind) 
 Old Maoris brought me from the Pontic strand, 
 And culled the mischief of a bounteous land. 
 Smeared with their powerful juices, on the plain ^ 
 
 He howls, a wolf among the hungry train : * 
 And oft the mighty necromancer boasts 
 With them, to call from tombs the stalking ghosts." * 
 
 Later, we find Culpeper, iti his herbal published in 1653, saying 
 of Moonwort ( Botrycliium Lunaria) : " Moonwort is an herb which 
 will open locks, and unshoe such horses as tread upon it, and country 
 people that I know call it * Unshoe the Horse.' Besides I have 
 heard commanders say, that on White Down in Devonshire, near 
 Tiverton, there was found thirty horse-shoes pulled off from the feet 
 of the Earl of Essex his horses being theic drawn up in a body, 
 many of them being but newly shod, and no reason known." 
 Numberless further examples of the superstitious belief in the magic 
 power of plants might be cited, but I must pass on to the history 
 of botany proper. This, for convenience of description, I shall 
 divide into four great epochs, galling them the Ancient, the Arabian, 
 the Artificial, and the Natural Epochs. 
 
 The Ancient Epoch embraces the period between the creation 
 of the world and the destruction of the Western Empire by the Goths 
 and Vandals, which races, cradled in war and rapine, hated science, 
 believing it caused effeminacy in its devotees, and would not allow 
 their children to cultivate it. The earliest known mention of plants 
 is in the Book of Genesis, where it is recorded by Moses that, on the 
 
 third day Go( 
 yielding seed, 
 seed is in itsel 
 that Adam ga^ 
 air, and the 
 beautifully am 
 the flowers, n 
 Garden of Ed 
 
 Fi 
 
 Through 
 
 herbs, and So 
 
 for in the Bo( 
 
 songs ; he als 
 
 even unto th< 
 
 may have dc 
 
 Pythagoras, a 
 
 plants, but tl- 
 
 of Homer, i 
 
 botanical knc 
 
 Aristotle 
 
 subjects of s 
 
 unorganized 
 
 on botany w 
 
 about 384 I 
 
 the proper 1 
 
 disciple Thei 
 
 Plants in tei 
 
 this he trea 
 
 describing a 
 
 with respect 
 
 as trees or s 
 
 and their jui 
 
 Nearly 
 
 about the b( 
 
 travelled ov 
 
 gives the ni 
 
 four classes 
 
THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 
 
 39 
 
 m, 
 
 in- 
 
 he 
 
 rds 
 
 third day God said : " Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb 
 
 yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose 
 
 seed is in itself, upon the earth ; and it was so.'* It is also recorded 
 
 that Adam gave names to all the beasts of the fields and fowls of the 
 
 air, and the "Blind. Bard" Milton, in his "Paradise Lost,' has 
 
 beautifully and poetically ascribed a similar task to Eve regarding 
 
 the dowers, making her exclaim, in her lamentation on quitting the 
 
 Garden of Eden : 
 
 " Oh flowers, 
 
 * * * which I bred up with tender hand 
 From the first opening bud, and gave ye names." 
 
 Throughout the Bible we find numerous allusions to trees and 
 herbs, and Solomon, it is probable, wrote a treatise upon the subject, 
 for in the Book of Kings it is said of him : " He spake proverbs and 
 songs ; he also spake of trees, from the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon, 
 even unto the hyssop, that springeth out of the wall." Anything he 
 may have done in this way, however, is totally lost. Anaxagoras, 
 Pythagoras, and other ancient Grecian philosophers also wrote upon 
 plants, but their works have shared the same fate, and the poems 
 of Homer, in secular literature, afford us the only vestiges of the 
 botanical knowledge of the earliest ages. 
 
 Aristotle included the vegetable kingdom among his numerous 
 subjects of study, and considered plants as intermediate between 
 unorganized matter and animals. Although we know that a treatise 
 on botany was issued among his other writings on Natural History, 
 about 384 B. C, all trace of it having disappeared, we may siy that 
 the proper historical era of the science begins with his friend and 
 disciple Theophraslus, who, about 300 B. C, published a History of 
 Plants in ten books, only one of which, however, is now extant. In 
 tliis he treats of the origin, propogation, and anatomy of plants, 
 describing about five hundred species, which are divided into classes 
 with respect to their generation ; their place of growth ; their size, 
 as trees or shrubs ; their use as culinary herbs and esculent grains ; 
 and their juices. 
 
 Nearly three hundred years after the time of Theophrastus, or 
 about the beginning of the Christian era, another Greek, Dioscorides, 
 travelled over Asia Minor and Italy, studying plants, of which he 
 ^ives the names and properties of about six hundred, arranged in 
 four classes, according to their uses ; viz., aromatic, nutritious, 
 
40 
 
 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 
 
 vinous, and medicinal plants. Nearly contemporary with Dioscorides 
 were Cato, Varro, and Virgil, who wrote on agriculture and rural 
 economy. 
 
 Following these worthies came the elder Pliny, who, in his fifty- 
 sixth year, became the victim of his curiosity for enquiry, while 
 attempting to witness an eruption of Vesuvius. He devoted sixteen 
 of the thirty-seven books comprising his '* History of the World " to 
 plants. Besides enumerating the discoverir s of Theophrastus and 
 Dioscorides he described many new species, bringing the number up 
 to above a thousand. Like the other ancient botanists though, Pliny 
 admits, with little or no distinction, truth and error, useful knowledge 
 and absurd fable, which fact, together with the want of a proper 
 systematic arrangement, renders it impossible to determine which are 
 the plants he described. 
 
 With Pliny closes what I have called the Ancient Epoch of 
 Botany, for after his time, its study rapidly declined, and ages of 
 darkness and lethargy succeeded. 
 
 The second, or Arabian, Epoch of Botany began during the 
 eighth century, with the reappearance of the elements of ancient plant 
 lore among the Saracens. This barbarous but noble race, who had 
 formerly shown their contempt for science by the wanton destruction 
 of the magnificent library of Alexandria, at this time became imbued 
 with a love of it, chiefly by contact with the many enlightened men, 
 who, banished by the Emperor Theodosius, had found refuge 
 amongst them. A succession of Caliphs, most notable of whom was 
 the famous Haroun Alraschid, by their fostering care of learning 
 and learned men, made Bagdad the most enlightened city in the 
 world. Serapion, well known in medicine, stands first on the 
 Arabian catalogue of botanists, and was followed by Rhazis, Avicenna, 
 Averhoes and Actuarius, while Plato Apuleius, of whose herbarium 
 very old manuscript copies are still preserved, is supposed to have 
 lived about this period. These men discovered many plants of 
 Persia, India and China, which were unknown to their predecessors, 
 but unluckily they thought less of observing nature and chronicling 
 their own observations, than of translating and commenting on the 
 old Grecian writers. In consequence, their descriptions of plants 
 are impeifect, and, for want of a systematic arrangement and com- 
 prehensive nomenclature, generally unrecognizable. If, howc )r. 
 
 they did litt 
 love of it, a 
 antiquity, tra 
 into their sc 
 
 Early in 
 masters of t 
 traitorous at 
 command of 
 Taric el Tue 
 this dought) 
 to Gibel Ti 
 Gibraltar ; a 
 the banks c 
 remained u 
 subjugation 
 elements of 
 Krance, Ital 
 cenic physic 
 century, an( 
 Arabians ur 
 this wonder 
 quests, lost 
 seemed at 
 Moorish ki 
 ignorance fr 
 
 Arrive( 
 upon the th 
 cial, being t 
 flourished, : 
 Ray, Tourr 
 
 An art 
 former sing 
 and arrange 
 venience ar 
 hand a nat 
 according t 
 that each s 
 most resem 
 
THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 
 
 41 
 
 they did little to advance the science, they at least kept alive the 
 love of it, and vigilantly watched over the intellectual treasures of 
 antiquity, translating the works of the ancients and introducing them 
 into their schools. 
 
 Early in the eighth century, the Moors, who had made themselves 
 masters ot northern Africa, induced by the representations of the 
 traitorous and apostate Count Julian, crossed the straits under the 
 command of Taric ben Zeyad, or, as he was known to the Spaniards, 
 Taric el Tuerto, or Taric, the one-eyed. Seizing the rock of Calpe, 
 this doughty chieftain fortified it as a stronghold, changing its name 
 to Gibel Taric, or the Mountain of Tarib, since corrupted into 
 Gibraltar ; and by his defeat of Don Roderick, last of the Goths, on 
 the banks of the Guadalete, ended the Gothic power, which had 
 remained unshaken in Spain for two and a half centuries. The 
 subjugation of the whole peninsula was speedily completed, and the 
 elements of botanical science, as known to the Arabs, soon spread to 
 France, Italy, Germany, and England. Abenguist, a famous Sara- 
 cenic physician and botanist, flourished about the end of the twelfth 
 century, and superiority in the sciences was preserved by the 
 Arabians until toward the close of the fifteenth. But when, in 1492, 
 this wonderful people, gradually divested of their European con- 
 quests, lost their last foothold in Spain by the fall of Granada, they 
 seemed at once, with the departure to Africa of the the last of the 
 Moorish kings, Boabdil el Chico, to replunge into that savage 
 ignorance from which they had so brilliantly emerged. 
 
 Arrived now at the beginning of the sixteenth century, we enter 
 upon the third great botanical epoch, which I have called the Artifi- 
 cial, being the period during which the artificial arrangement of plants 
 flourished, a period adorned by such names as Caesalpinus, Morison, 
 Kay, Tournefort, and, greatest of all, the immortal Linnaeus. 
 
 An artificial classification differs from a natural one, in that the 
 former singles out one or more points of resemblance or difference, 
 and arranges by them without reference to other considerations, con- 
 venience and facility being the controlling principles. On the other 
 hand a natural system aims to arrange all known plants into groups 
 according to their resemblances and their degrees of resemblance, so 
 that each species, genus and order shall stand next to that which it 
 most resembles in all respects^ or rather in the whole plan of structure. 
 
42 
 
 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 
 
 In Other words, an artificial system arranges plants on a certain part, 
 or parts, of them, while a natural one takes ail the parts into con- 
 sideration. 
 
 The initial point of this epoch was the arising of greater 
 independence of thought concerning aucient writers. Men began to 
 say — we have been looking everywhere for the plants of Theo- 
 phrastus, Dioscorides, and Pliny, whereas they did not know a tithe 
 of those covering the earth. What foolishness to endeavor to apply 
 to the plants of one's own country, France, England, etc , as the 
 case might be, the names under which these men described those of 
 Greece and Asia, without knowing whether they are the same. We 
 must explore each country, and collect, examine and compare the 
 plants of the one with the other, for then only will we be in a 
 position to distinguish them. 
 
 About 1536 the first botanical garden of modern times was 
 establish in Italy, on the banks of the river Po, by Brasavola, but to 
 the Germans belongs the honor of being the first to publish books 
 founded mainly on actual observation — Otto Brunfels, of Mayence, 
 having issued such a work in 1530. It also contained the first cuts, 
 but, as Willdenow remarks : " The drawings are not very good, and 
 do not in the least correspond with his own descriptions." To Ger- 
 many is also due the credit, in the Herbal of Jerome Bock, published 
 1532, of producing the fir<:t botanist, who replaced the old alphebeti- 
 cal order, in which plants had always been hitherto described, with 
 an arrangement depending on their natural resemblances, that is 
 the likeness which may be observed by the most unscientific persons 
 in their general forms and characters. Crude as was his work it 
 introduced a new principle which had the greatest influence m 
 promoting the advancement of systematic botany. Up to this time 
 botanists had blindly followed the ancient writers in classifying 
 plants by their roots, herbage, time of flowering, place of growth, 
 medical or economic uses, and other arbitrary distinctions, and it was 
 not till about 1560 that Conrad Gesner, of Zurich, in his " Historia 
 Plantarum," first suggested the existence, in the vegetable kingdom, 
 of groups, or genera, each composed of many species united by 
 similar characters of the flower and fruit. Gesner did not, however, 
 estabhsh any plan founded upon this principle, but, having formu- 
 lated the idea, left its first application to Dr. Andrew Caesalpinus, a 
 physician of Pisa, Italy, who, in a work published in Florence, in 
 
 1583. prop 
 systematic 
 
 purpose we 
 
 absence of 
 
 seed, the a 
 
 in the pari 
 
 adherence 
 
 whether bi 
 
 be adoptei 
 
 follow in 
 
 interval th( 
 
 Clusius te 
 
 superfluous 
 
 istic, and t 
 
 spective wc 
 
 all previoi 
 
 period, too 
 
 some of t 
 
 they prop 
 
 arrangeme 
 
 Italian, on 
 
 animals. 
 
 In i( 
 
 Superintei 
 
 carried ii 
 
 systematic 
 
 out with t 
 
 and herk 
 
 habits. '\ 
 
 proposed 
 
 rum Nov 
 
 plants int 
 
 appearanc 
 
 growth, tl 
 
 kind of 
 
 his divisic 
 
 dicotyled 
 
 division c 
 
 trees and 
 
THK HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 
 
 4$ 
 
 1583, proposed to form species into classes, and thus originated 
 systematic botany. The characters which he employed for this 
 purpose were the duration and size of plants, the presence or 
 absence of flowers, the number of cotyledons, the situation of the 
 seed, the adherence of the pericarp to the seed, the number of cells 
 in the paricarp with the number of seeds in each of these cells, the 
 adherence of the calyx to the germ, and the nature of the root, 
 whether bulbous or filrous. This method was too imperfect to 
 be adopted, however, and for nearly a century no one appeared to 
 follow in the path which Caesalpinus had opened. During this 
 interval though, the science was gradually improved in its details, 
 Clusius teaching botanists to describe accurately by discarding 
 superfluous terms without the omission of any important character- 
 istic, and the brothers, John and Caspar, Bauhin adding to their re- 
 spective works a synonymy, or exact list of the diff*erent names which 
 all previous writers had applied to the same plant. In the same 
 period, too, flourished a number of other and less illustrious authors, 
 some of them chiefly notable for the useless or laughable systems 
 they proposed, to wit. : Du Pas, a Frenchman, suggested an 
 arrangement of plants by their time of flowering, and Porta, an 
 Italian, one from their relation to the stars, to men, and to other 
 animals. 
 
 In 1680, Robert Morison, a native of Aberdeen, Scotland, and 
 Superintendent of the Botanic Gardens at Oxford, revived and 
 carried into practice the principle of Caesalpinus, in his great 
 systematic work, " The Universal History of Plants." Morison sets 
 out with the division of plants, from their consistence, into ligneous 
 and herbaceous, and founds his system on their fruit, blossoms, and 
 habits. Two years later, John Ray, of Trinity College, Cambridge, 
 proposed another system of classification in his " Methodus Planta- 
 rum Nova," a work amended and completed in 1703. He divided 
 plants into thirty-five classes, formed on their habits and external 
 appearances, their greater or less degrees of perfection, their place of 
 growth, the number of seeds, petals or sepals to the flower, and the 
 kind of fruit or infloiesence. The great merit of Ray's system was 
 his division of herbs into flowerless and flowering, and the latter into 
 dicotyledenous and monocotyledonous ; its great fault the primary 
 division of plants into trees and herbs. This division of plants into 
 trees and herbs, referring the larger shrubs to the former the under- 
 
 (*i 
 
 V,. 
 i 
 
 f 
 
 h 
 
44 
 
 JOURNAL AND PROCEF,t)lNGS 
 
 shrubs to the latter, had been adopted by every botanical writer since 
 the days of Aristotle, and by its antiquity had gained an importance 
 to which it was by no means entitled. The first to note the great 
 demerit of such a primary division, from its uncertainty and repug- 
 nance to the spirit of system, was Augustus Rivinus, Professor of 
 Botany at Leipsic, who, eight years after the first publication of Ray's 
 system, that is in 1690, discarded it and proposed a classification 
 based wholly on the corolla. 
 
 . Knaut, Herman, Boerhave, Ruppius, and Ludwig were also 
 prominent botanists of this, the seventeenth, century, but the next 
 after Rivinus to advance a leading system was Joseph Pitton de 
 Tournefort, a native of Provence, and Curator of the Jardin du Roi. 
 Tournefort travelled through Spain, Holland and the East, collecting 
 extensively, and published his method of classification, *' Elements 
 of Botany," in 1694. It was more definite but more artificial than 
 that of Ray, being based, like Rivinus', almost wholfy upon modifi- 
 cations of the corolla, but unfortunately it revived the old division 
 of plants into trees and herbs, which the latter had so wisely 
 discarded. Its great advance over previous systems was, that in it, 
 genera, as we now understand them, were first established and 
 defined, all the species then known being referred to them, so that, 
 in one sense, Linnaeus was right in calling Tournefort the founder of 
 genera. 
 
 Many authors of note followed the lead of Tournefort, includ- 
 ing Jussieu, Vaillant, Petit, Vallentin, Dillenius, Linden and Sloane, 
 but it was not until 1735 that Linn?eus, suddenly emerging from 
 obscurity, offered to the world a system of botany so far superior to 
 all others as to leave no room for dispute as to its comparative 
 merit. Karl Linne', or, as he is more commonly styled Linnixius, 
 was born oa the 23rd of May, 1707, at Rashult, in Sweden. His 
 father, a clergyman, had designed his son for the same sacred call- 
 ing, but the boy's teachers seeing him pay less attention to Hebrew 
 and theology than to the study of natural history, advised him to 
 apprentice him to shoemaking or some other trade, as being quite 
 unfit for any of the learned professions. Happily for the progress of 
 science this advice was not acted upon by the disappointed parent, 
 who, instead, accepted the offer of one Dr. Rothman, Professor of 
 Medicine in the College of Wexio, to give him an education pre- 
 paratory for his entering his own profession. For some time aft»-f 
 
 his malricul 
 najus' strugg 
 both his boti 
 the instructi( 
 perate. His 
 he was often 
 or cast-ofT ga 
 at their lowi 
 one of the F 
 illustrative O! 
 A small 
 into his ham 
 existence of 
 botany founc 
 arranged nes 
 the same tii 
 the attention 
 desirous of c 
 the office of 
 also free ace 
 scurity were 
 known to m 
 the Royal A 
 history of I. 
 published in 
 as travelling 
 setting out 
 where it coi 
 While in Le 
 returning th 
 and was so 
 nneus' permi 
 botanists re< 
 ately embra 
 fied by the 
 next, in sue 
 ance and se 
 Dillenius, at 
 him every c 
 
THE HAMILTON AF^SOCIATION. 
 
 4$ 
 
 his malriculation at the University of Lund, in 1727, young Lin- 
 nreus* struggle was a terribly uphill one. His endeavor to pursue 
 both his botanical and medical studies, while relying for support on 
 the instruction of private pupils, made his circumstances almost des- 
 perate. His father was too poor to do anything more for him, and 
 he was often indebted to his fellow-students for an occasional meal 
 or cast-off garment. In 1729, however, just when his fortunes were 
 at their lowest ebb, he was engaged by the Rev. Olaus Celsius, 
 one of the Professors at Upsal, to help in a work he was preparing, 
 illustrative of Bible plants. 
 
 A small work of Vaillant's, on the structure of flowers, now fell 
 into his hands, and from the ingenious remarks of that writer on the 
 existence of sex in plants, he conceived the idea of a system of 
 botany founded on t?he stamens and pistils, a system on which were 
 arranged nea-ly all his subsequent botanical contributions. About 
 the same time a short treatise which he had composed, attracted 
 the attention of Rudbeck, Professor of Botany, who, being old, was 
 desirous of obtaining a competent assistant, and he assigned to him 
 the office of demonstrating plants in the botanic garden, giving him 
 also free access to his fine library. The clouds of poverty and ob- 
 scurity were thenceforth gradually dispelled, and Linnwus became 
 known to men of talent as a rising genius. In 1731 he was sent by 
 the Royal Academy of Sciences at Upsal to investigate the natural 
 history of Lapland, the results of which expedition he afterwards 
 published in his ** Flora Lapponica." In 1734 we find him acting 
 as travelling tutor to the sons of Baron Renterholm, and in 1735 
 setting out to take his degree as doctor of medicine in Holland, 
 where it could be procured at much less expense than in Sweden. 
 While in Leyden he called upon the celebrated Dr. Gronovius, who, 
 returning the visit, saw the manuscript of his " Systema Naturae," 
 and was so astonished and delighted with it that he requested Lin- 
 naeus' permission to get it printed at his own expense. The Dutch 
 botanists received the work with i le utmost cordiality, and immedi- 
 ately embraced and adopted the system, which was further ampli- 
 fied by the publication of the " Genera Plantarum." Linnaeus 
 next, in succession, visited England, where he made the acquaint- 
 ance and secured the friendship of Sir Hans Sloane and the learned 
 Dillenius, and France, where the Jussieus, uncle and nephew, showed 
 him every courtesy. Returning to Sweden he settled in Stockholm 
 
46 
 
 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 
 
 to begin the practice of his profession, and in 1739 married a Miss 
 MorjEus, to whom he had been long engaged, but whom he had 
 previously been prevented marrying by his straitened circumstances. 
 Soon after he was appointed to fill the chair of natural history in 
 the Upsal University, and his great fame and extensive correspond- 
 ence enabled him to enrich the academic gardens with an immense 
 variety of plants. Jussieu and Van Royen sent him those of India, 
 Haller and Ludwig European ones, and Collinson and Cateshy 
 specimens from the New World, while his pupils Thunberg, Hassel- 
 quest, Kalm, Osbeck and others gave him details and material from 
 their travels in Europe, Asia, Africa and America. Riches now 
 flowed rapidly in upon htm, and in 1757 he was elevated to the 
 nobility, taking the title of Von Linne'. This speedy rise to wealth 
 and honors did not, however, in anywise diminish his assiduity in 
 study, and an extraordinary number of works were completed in 
 various departments of natural history, all evincing the same clear- 
 ness of ideas and precision of language which have made his writings 
 so especially valuable. Toward the close of his life, Linnaeus, who 
 for many years had enjoyed excellent health, was attacked by apo- 
 plexy, which, in some degree, impaired his mental powers. The 
 first attack occurred in 1776. In the succeeding year he had a 
 second stroke, and, after a lingering illness, died on the roth of Jan- 
 uary, 1778, in the seventy-first year of his age. A general mourn- 
 ing of the nation followed, while the king, Gustavus III , in a speech 
 Irom the throne, alluded to his death as a public calamity, and 
 ordered a medal to be struck expressive of the national grief at hir, 
 loss. The best idea of the marvellous ability of this gieat man is 
 gained from the title by which he has been honored by the scion 
 tific world, a far prouder one than any mere hereditary distinction, 
 that of " Prince of Naturalists." 
 
 Linnaeus' greatest work, the " Species Plantarum," which Haller 
 has emphatically termed " Maximum opus et aeternum," appeared 
 in 1753. To this all his other botanical productions were in some 
 measure only preparatory. 
 
 The Linniean or Sexual System is, briefly, as follows. All 
 known plants are divided into twenty-four classes, the characters of 
 which are formed on the number, or difference in situation or arrange- 
 ment, of the stamens. The names assigned to these classes arc of 
 Greek derivation, and express their several distinctions, e. g.^ Mon- 
 
 andria, Dial 
 the classes e 
 gamia. Th( 
 number, siti 
 recommends 
 was to help ; 
 plant, in th( 
 recognition 
 Floras as a 1 
 artificial cla 
 gave to the 
 out a paralle 
 the Linnteai 
 wonderfully, 
 author's des< 
 tionships of 
 
 Not lea 
 troduction c 
 guishing eve 
 sentence wa 
 such a lengt 
 the study o 
 wieldiness. 
 be judged f 
 Linnaeus. 
 
 "In yc 
 on the coas 
 turn angusti 
 saxatilis, fol 
 object. Bi 
 multiflora, 
 leaves broai 
 
 The p« 
 seems to hz 
 order Caryc 
 
 Linnae 
 binomial n 
 species by t 
 in his " Fl( 
 
thp: haamlton association. 
 
 47 
 
 se 
 
 andria, Diandria, Triandria, etc Stamens and pistils exist in all 
 the classes except the twenty-fourth, which embraces the Crypto- 
 gamia. The orders are founded, as far as possible, on a similar 
 number, situation or arrangement, of the pistils. The strongest 
 recommendation and the sole aim of the Linnaean artificial system 
 was to help anyone to learn the name and history of an unknown 
 plant, in the most easy and certain manner, and even after the 
 recognition of the natural system, it was customary to prefix it to 
 Floras as a key to the genera. It stands unrivalled as a convenient 
 artificial classification of plants, and the impetus its introduction 
 gave to the study of botany throughout the civilized world is with- 
 out a parallel. Although its classes and orders have passed away, 
 the Linntean genera and species have stood the test of time most 
 wonderfully, a fact owing to the remarkable exactness of the great 
 author's descriptions, as well as his keen preception of the true rela- 
 tionships of plants. 
 
 Not least among the wonderful works of Linnceus was his in- 
 troduction of a binomial nomenclature, or the method of distin- 
 guishing every plant by only two words. Prior to his time a whole 
 sentence was often required to express the name of a plant, and to 
 such a length had many of the names grown that had it continued 
 the study of botany must have been abandoned from its mere un- 
 wieldiness. The terrible labor of handling these long nanes may 
 be judged from the following extract from a letter of Dillenius to 
 Linnaeus. 
 
 "In your last letter I find^ plant gathered in Charles Island, 
 on the coast of Gothland, which you judge to be Polygonum erec- 
 tum angustifolium, floribus candidis of Mentzelius, and Caryophyllum 
 saxatilis, foliis gramineis, umbellatis corymbis of Bauhin ; nor do I 
 object. But it is by no means Tournefort's Lychnis alpina linifolia, 
 multiflora, perampla radice, whose flowers are more scattered and 
 leaves broader in the middle, though narrower at the end. " 
 
 The poor plant, the object of all these opprobrious epithets, 
 seems to have been Gypsophila fasiigiata, L., a Swiss plant of the 
 order Caryophyllacea2. 
 
 Linnaeus himself did not at first perceive the great value of a 
 binomial nomenclature, and in his early works he distinguished 
 species by the long explanatory phrases of the older botanists ; thus, 
 in his " Flora I^pponica," he names a violet, " Viola foliis subro- 
 
 ■;:| 
 
 t 
 
48 
 
 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 
 
 tundis cordatis pedunculis radicatis," which translated would make 
 the name of the plant, the violet with long-peduncled, suhro- 
 tund, cordate root-leaves. This unwieldy title for the common 
 European marsh-violet, he afterwards, in his "Species Plantarum," 
 where he first used, as he terms them, trivial names, converted 
 into Viola palustris^ the name it still bears. 
 
 With Linnaeus I will close what I have named the Artificial, 
 and enter on the Natural epoch of botany, for though his system of 
 classes and orders held sway for nearly a hundred years, and some 
 of you probably studied it in one or more of the numerous authors 
 who copied him, yet, even before his death, there had begun to 
 spring up the natural system which is now in use That Linnreus 
 himself recognized the importance and superiority of such a system 
 we know by the following extract from one of his letters on the 
 subject to the celebrated Professor Haller of Gottingen. 
 
 " I have never spoken of my sexual system as a natural method ; 
 on the contrary, in my Systema I have said, ' No natural botanical 
 system has yet been constructed, though one or two may be more 
 so than others; nor do I contend that this system is by uny means 
 natural. I do not deny that a natural method is preferable, not 
 only to my system, but to all that have been invented. Probably I 
 may, on a future occasion, propose some fragments of such a one. 
 Meanwhile, till that is discovered, artificial systems are indispensa 
 ble.' " 
 
 This expressed intention to attempt a natural classification was 
 carried into effect by an effort to group the known genera under 
 sixty-seven natural orders, Piperitoe, Palmaj, Amentaceae, etc., but 
 was afterwards abandoned. 
 
 The problem was taken up by a contemporary and correspond- 
 ent of Linnaeus, Bernard de Jussieu, a Frenchman and curator of 
 the Royal Garden at Trianon, who, however, left nothing in writing 
 but a bare catalogue of the gardens, and it was left for a pupil of 
 his, one Michael Adanson, a native of Provence, to first publish, in 
 his "Familes des Plantes," 1763^ a complete system of natural 
 orders. Under this system one class consisted of all plants with 
 similar roots, another of all with similar stems, and a third of all with 
 similar leaves as regarded form and situation, but the most important 
 distinctions he considered as founded on the organs of fructifica- 
 tion. The system of this ingenious botanist, whose name is pre- 
 
 served in th 
 
 and had si 
 
 supporters, 
 
 system of b 
 
 more than \ 
 
 sieu, who w 
 
 the Bernard 
 
 he became ' 
 
 and indeed 
 
 sion of mec 
 
 accessory s< 
 
 voted to the 
 
 at the Jardi 
 
 his entire t 
 
 the cpnditi 
 
 After .ninel 
 
 "Genera I 
 
 which one 
 
 and define 
 
 arranged ui 
 
 dom was in 
 
 which were 
 
 accorded ti 
 
 that of Li 
 
 many work 
 
 of the fom 
 
 as an artifi 
 
 Ther 
 
 dolle, anot 
 
 Geneva, ir 
 
 an event m 
 
 one who : 
 
 science. 
 
 Francaise, 
 
 which pre 
 
 life, and b 
 
 order has 
 
 system th( 
 
 ogamous) 
 
THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 
 
 49 
 
 served in the Adansonia or Calabash tree of Africa, was so cumberous 
 and had such a barbarous nomenclature that it never found many 
 supporters, and the fame of being called the founder of the natural 
 system of botany has fallen to Antoine Laurent de Jussieu, to whom 
 more than any other person the honor may be ascribed. This Jus- 
 sieu, who was born at Lyons, France, in 1748, was the nephew of 
 Ihe Bernard de Jussieu mentioned before, whose pupil and assistant 
 he became when still a youth. Like most of the distinguished early, 
 and indeed later, botanists, this great genius had adopted the profes- 
 sion of medicine, to which even yet botany was only considered an 
 accessory science, and the first few years of his life in Paris were de- 
 voted to the study of it. Afterwards appointed demonstrator of botany 
 at the Jardin du Roi, now the Jardin des Plantes, he thenceforth gave 
 his entire time and energy to his favorite science, and especially to 
 the cpnditions necessary to the formation of a natural system. 
 After .nineteen years patient labor he published, in 1789, his 
 "Genera Plantarum Secundem Ordines Naturales Disposita," in 
 which one hundred natural orders of plants were first established 
 and defined by proper characters, nearly all known genera being 
 arranged under them. His primary division of the vegetable king- 
 dom was into Acotyledones, Monocotyledones, and Dicotyledones, 
 which were again subdivided into fifteen classes. The reception 
 accorded to the system of Jussieu was not nearly as cordial as to 
 that of Linnaeus, the two systems being regarded as rivals, and 
 many works were published endeavoring to show that the method 
 of the former was not more natural than the Linnaean, while inferior 
 as an artificial one. 
 
 The next great systematist was Augustine Pyramme de Can- 
 dolle, another member of the medical profession, who was born at 
 Geneva, in 1778, a year made memorable by the death of Linnaeus, 
 an event which occurred only about three weeks before the birth of 
 one who stands only second to him in the same department of 
 science. In his *' Principes de Botanique " prefixed to the " Flore 
 Francaise," published in 1805, he reversed the order of Jussieu, 
 which proceeded from the lower to the higher forms of vegetable 
 life, and began with the latter. On account of its convenience this 
 order has been commonly followed ever since. In the Candollean 
 sy&tem the primary division is into Vascular (more properly Phaen- 
 ogamous) plants, and Cellular (more properly Cryptogamous) plants. 
 
 ■ f 1 
 
 1 ■■ 
 
 
so 
 
 JOURNAL AMD PROCEEDINGS 
 
 These in turn are again divided, the former into Dicotyledenous or 
 Exogenous and Monocotyledenous or Endogenous plants ; the 
 latter into ^theogamous plants, those with sexual apparatus and 
 vascular or cellular tissue, including Equisetacese, Filices, Musci 
 and Hepaticse, and Amphigameus plants, those destitute of sexual 
 organs and composed of other than cellular tissue, including Lichens, 
 Fungi, and Algse. The great fault in this system was the non- 
 recognition that plants of all orders are bisexual. 
 
 . John Lindley, Robert Brown, and Stephen Endlicher, between 
 1827 and 1843, variously modified, and in some respects improved, 
 the Candollean arrangement, and the •* Genera Plantarum " of 
 George Bentham and Joseph D. Hooker, the third and concluding 
 volume of which was issued seven years ago, brings our history ot 
 botany down to the present day. These latter authors adopt in a 
 general way the Candollean sequence of orders, with various emen- 
 dations, and theirs is the system now generally followed. Begun in 
 1862 and finished in 1883, these volumes stand as the second great 
 botanical work of the present century, the " Prodromus " of De 
 CandoUe being the first.' 
 
 In the September, 1883, number of the "American Journal of 
 Science," Dr. Gray compared the various published •* Genera Plan- 
 tarum " in the following way, which may be of interest to you : 
 " Some idea of the progressive enlargement of the field may be had 
 by a comparison of the number of genera characterized in these 
 successive works. The phaenogamous genera of 
 
 Linnaeus, "Genera Plantarum," published 1737, were 887 
 Jussieu, " " " 1789, " 1707 
 
 Eudltcherj " " " 1843, " 6400 
 
 Bentham & Hooker, " " " 1883, " 7585 
 
 An estimate of the known number of species of each genus and 
 higher group has been made throughout the work. In round num- 
 bers it may fairly be said that about one hundred thousand species 
 of phenogamous plants are in the hands of botanists." I 
 
 It will thus be seen that in a little less than one hundred and 
 fifty years the number of genera has been increased from 887 to 
 
 7585. 
 
 I cannot close this brief, though I fear for your patience too 
 lengthy, account of the history of botany, without calling to your 
 attention the names of some of the most distinguished writers on 
 
 American 
 to bring 
 Among th 
 Nuttall, T 
 Dr. Asa 
 society ex| 
 
THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 
 
 St 
 
 American plants, whose efforts have in more ways than one helped 
 to bring the noble science of botany to its present advanced state. 
 Among them are Bartram, Michaux, Muhlenberg, Pursh, Eaton, 
 Nuttall, Torrey, Bigelow, and, last but greatest, the late, lamented 
 Dr. Asa Gray, at whose death, so recently as January, 1888, our 
 society expressed by unanimous resolution its deep regret. 
 
 fef^ 
 
 Mi