BY
JULIUS VON SACHS
PROFESSOR OF BOTANY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF WÜRZBURG
AUTHORISED TRANSLATION
BY
HENRY E. F. GARNSEY, M.A.
Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford
REVISED BY
ISAAC BAYLEY BALFOUR, M.A., M.D., F.R.S.
Professor of Botany in the University
And Keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh
Oxford
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1890
[All rights reserved]
Oxford
PRINTED AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
BY HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
[PREFACE.]
Botanical Science is made up of three distinct branches of knowledge, Classification founded on Morphology, Phytotomy, and Vegetable Physiology. All these strive towards a common end, a perfect understanding of the vegetable kingdom, but they differ entirely from one another in their methods of research, and therefore presuppose essentially different intellectual endowments. That this is the case is abundantly shown by the history of the science, from which we learn that up to quite recent times morphology and classification have developed in almost entire independence of the other two branches. Phytotomy has indeed always maintained a certain connection with physiology, but where principles peculiar to each of them, fundamental questions, had to be dealt with, there they also went their way in almost entire independence of one another. It is only in the present day that a deeper conception of the problems of vegetable life has led to a closer union between the three. I have sought to do justice to this historical fact by treating the parts of my subject separately; but in this case, if the present work was to be kept within suitable limits, it became necessary to devote a strictly limited space only to each of the three historical delineations. It is obvious that the weightiest and most important matter only could find a place in so narrow a frame, but this I do not exactly regard as a misfortune, and in the interests of the reader it is rather an advantage; for, in accordance with the objects of the ‘General History of the Sciences,’ this History of Botany is not intended for professional persons only, but for a wider circle of readers, and to these perhaps even the details presented in it may here and there seem wearisome.