Lobel, who was botanist to James the First, and who published his Stirpium Adversaria Nova in 1571, brings together the natural families of plants more distinctly than his predecessors, and even distinguishes (as Cuvier states,[67]) monocotyledonous from dicotyledonous plants; one of the most comprehensive division-lines of botany, of which succeeding times discovered the value more completely. Fabius Columna,[68] in 1616, gave figures of the fructification of plants on copper, as Gessner had before done on wood. But the elder Bauhin (John), notwithstanding all that Cæsalpinus had done, retrograded, in a work published in 1619, into the less precise and scientific distinctions of—trees with nuts; with berries; with acorns; with pods; creeping plants, gourds, &c.: and no clear progress towards a system was anywhere visible among the authors of this period.
[67] Cuv. Leçons, &c. 198.
[68] Ib. 206.
While this continued to be the case, and while the materials, thus destitute of order, went on accumulating, it was inevitable that the evils which Cæsalpinus had endeavored to remedy, should become more and more grievous. “The nomenclature of the subject[69] was in such disorder, it was so impossible to determine with certainty the plants spoken of by preceding writers, that thirty or forty different botanists had given to the same plant almost as many different names. Bauhin called by one appellation, a species which Lobel or Matheoli designated by another. There was an actual chaos, a universal confusion, in which it was impossible for men to find their way.” We can the better understand such a state of things, from having, in our own time, seen another classificatory science, Mineralogy, in the very condition thus described. For such a state of confusion there is no remedy but the establishment of a true system of classification; which by its real foundation renders a reason for the place of each species; and which, by the fixity of its classes, affords a basis for a standard nomenclature, as finally took place in Botany. But before such a remedy is obtained, men naturally try to alleviate the evil by tabulating the synonyms of different writers, as far as they are able to do so. The task of constructing such a Synonymy of botany at the period of which we speak, was undertaken by Gaspard Bauhin, the brother of John, but nineteen years younger. This work, the Pinax Theatri Botanici, was printed [382] at Basil in 1623. It was a useful undertaking at the time; but the want of any genuine order in the Pinax itself, rendered it impossible that it should be of great permanent utility.
[69] Ib. 212.
After this period, the progress of almost all the sciences became languid for a while; and one reason of this interruption was, the wars and troubles which prevailed over almost the whole of Europe. The quarrels of Charles the First and his parliament, the civil wars and the usurpation, in England; in France, the war of the League, the stormy reign of Henry the Fourth, the civil wars of the minority of Louis the Thirteenth, the war against the Protestants and the war of the Fronde in the minority of Louis the Fourteenth; the bloody and destructive Thirty Years’ War in Germany; the war of Spain with the United Provinces and with Portugal;—all these dire agitations left men neither leisure nor disposition to direct their best thoughts to the promotion of science. The baser spirits were brutalized; the better were occupied by high practical aims and struggles of their moral nature. Amid such storms, the intellectual powers of man could not work with their due calmness, nor his intellectual objects shine with their proper lustre.
At length a period of greater tranquillity gleamed forth, and the sciences soon expanded in the sunshine. Botany was not inert amid this activity, and rapidly advanced in a new direction, that of physiology; but before we speak of this portion of our subject, we must complete what we have to say of it as a classificatory science.
Sect. 4.—Sequel to the Epoch of Cæsalpinus. Further Formation and Adoption of Systematic Arrangement.
Soon after the period of which we now speak, that of the restoration of the Stuarts to the throne of England, systematic arrangements of plants appeared in great numbers; and in a manner such as to show that the minds of botanists had gradually been ripening for this improvement, through the influence of preceding writers, and the growing acquaintance with plants. The person whose name is usually placed first on this list, Robert Morison, appears to me to be much less meritorious than many of those who published very shortly after him; but I will give him the precedence in my narrative. He was a Scotchman, who was wounded fighting on the royalist side in the civil wars of England. On the triumph of the republicans, he withdrew to France, when he became director of the garden of Gaston, Duke of Orléans at Blois; and there he came under the notice of our Charles [383] the Second; who, on his restoration, summoned Morison to England, where he became Superintendent of the Royal Gardens, and also of the Botanic Garden at Oxford. In 1669, he published Remarks on the Mistakes of the two Bauhins, in which he proves that many plants in the Pinax are erroneously placed, and shows considerable talent for appreciating natural families and genera. His great systematic work appeared from the University press at Oxford in 1680. It contains a system, but a system, Cuvier says,[70] which approaches rather to a natural method than to a rigorous distribution, like that of his predecessor Cæsalpinus, or that of his successor Ray. Thus the herbaceous plants are divided into climbers, leguminous, siliquose, unicapsalar, bicapsular, tricapsular, quadricapsular, quinquecapsular; this division being combined with characters derived from the number of petals. But along with these numerical elements, are introduced others of a loose and heterogeneous kind, for instance, the classification of herbs as lactescent and emollient. It is not unreasonable to say, that such a scheme shows no talent for constructing a complete system; and that the most distinct part of it, that dependent on the fruit, was probably borrowed from Cæsalpinus. That this is so, we have, I think, strong proof; for though Morison nowhere, I believe, mentions Cæsalpinus, except in one place in a loose enumeration of botanical writers,[71] he must have made considerable use of his work. For he has introduced into his own preface a passage copied literally[72] from the dedication of Cæsalpinus; which passage we have already quoted ([p. 374],) beginning, “Since all science consists in the collection of similar, and the distinction of dissimilar things.” And that the mention of the original is not omitted by accident, appears from this; that Morison appropriates also the conclusion of the passage, which has a personal reference, “Conatus sum id præstare in universa plantarum historia, ut si quid pro ingenii mei tenuitate in hujusmodi studio profecerim, ad communem utilitatem proferrem.” That Morison, thus, at so long an interval after the publication of the work of Cæsalpinus, borrowed from him without acknowledgement, and adopted his system so as to mutilate it, proves that he had neither the temper nor the talent of a discoverer; and justifies us withholding from him the credit which belongs to those, who, in his time, resumed the great undertaking of constructing a vegetable system.
[70] Cuv. Leçons, &c. p. 486.