Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS PART OF VOLUME 54 Landmarks of Botanical History A Study of Certain Epochs in the Development of the Science of Botany Part I. — Prior to 1562 a.d. BY Edward Lee Greene No. 1870 CITY OF WASHINGTON PUBIJSHED BY THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 1909 ADVERTISEMENT The present paper by Dr. Edward Lee Greene, Associate in Botany in the U. S. National Museum, entitled "Landmarks of Botanical History," discusses certain epochs in the develop- ment of the science of botany. The subject is viewed from a philosophical rather than an industrial standpoint, and the author gives prominence to the biography of some of the early botanists, including Theophrastus (b.c. 370-286), and Brunfelsius, Fuchsius, Tragus, and Cordus of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Doc- tor Greene has in preparation further contributions on this general subject. Charles D. Walcott, Secretary, Smithsonian Institution. Washington, November, 1909. CONTEXTS PAGE Preface ......... 7 Introductory ........ 13 CHAPTER I. The Rhizotomi ....... 45 II. Theophrastus of Eresus, B.C. 370-286 (or 262) . 52 III. Greeks and Romans after Theophrastus . 143 IV. Introductory to the Sixteenth Century German Fathers ........ 165 V. Otho Brunfelsius, 1464-1 534 .... 169 VI. Leonhardus Fuchsius, 1 501-1566 . 192 VII. Hieronymus Tragus, 1498-1554 .... 220 VIII. Euricius Cordus. 1486-1535 . 263 IX. Valerius Cordus, 1515-1544 ... 270 Index . 315 — PREFACE Any discussion, or any indication even, of landmarks in the history of botany must needs be preceded by a somewhat careful enquiry into the nature and purposes of the science as such. Where- in does botany, as a science, essentially consist? With this question unanswered it were impracticable either to indicate the origin or trace the progress of it. In the most extended use of the term, all information about the plant world or any part of it is botany. According to this view, all treatises upon agriculture, horticulture, floriculture, forestry, and pharmacy, in so far as they deal with plants and their products, are botanical. What many will consider a better use of the term is more re- stricted. In this use of it there will be excluded from the category of the properly botanical whatever has no bearing on the philosophy of plant life and form. For example, that wheat, rice, and maize agree together as to that anatomical structure which is called endogenous would be a fact of purely botanical interest. Quite as clearly such would be the proposition that all three belong to the natural family of the grasses; or this, that each represents a genus; or that the roots in all these plants are fibrous, and of only annual duration. But if it be said that wheat, rice, and maize as food products are of supreme importance to mankind, the affirmation is as completely unbotanical as the several foregoing are per- fectly botanical. It is strictly an economical consideration. If such a distinction between botany and plant industry as I have sought thus to illustrate be received as legitimate, the province of botany is easily circumscribed and its scope clearly definable. In any event, for the purposes of the present work our definition of this science shall be that it occupies itself with the contemplation of plant as related to plant, and with the whole vegetable kingdom as viewed philosophically—not economically or commercially in its relation to the mineral on the one hand, and to the animal on the other. Such a distinguishing between the philosophical study of plants 7 8 PREFACE and the industrial does not dispute, but rather establishes, the ex- istence of a wide border domain between science and industrial art where botanist and industralist work side by side upon plant subjects; it may be sympathizingly and intercommunicatively, or it may be ignoring each other's presence; a domain within which nevertheless each should be in touch with the other, because each may, and ought to be helpful to the other, as supplying some data useless for his own purposes but of significance in relation to the other's aims. The recognition of this border-land domain illustrates also, if it does not again directly argue, the distinctness of the two realms of botany and plant industry. Here one may observe that the distinction itself would seem less marked if he who is to set himself to the work of an economic or industrial botanist would first of all equip himself with a knowledge of the principles, and cultivate an interest in the aims, of philosophic and scientific botany; so that the industrial botanist as author might always have two reports to make upon any piece of research, one that should be of economic interest, the other one of interest botanical. It may be that this idea will be found to presuppose the conjunction of the philosophic bent of mind with the industrial ; a combination of two qualities of mind as rare in the world as genius itself, and less desirable. In quest, therefore, of a starting point—a first landmark— in the progress of botany, in my understanding of the science, one may pass those authors by w^ho professedly treat of plants from the utilitarian point of view, whether they write of agriculture, horticulture, or of the materia medica. Passing these by, I say, though by no means as not meriting the botanist's attention; for all matters relating to the qualities of plants naturally interest him, unless he be of that school in power a century ago, but now declining in influence, according to whose teachings nothing but dry morphology was of any import. Moreover, to him who, like the farmer, the woodsman, and the primitive pharmacist, has much to do with plants industrially, philosophic ideas may occur about the vegetable kingdom as a whole or in part; and every such idea, though crude, perhaps even erroneous, is a concept essentially botanical. Quite as perfectly so is the distinguishing of different kinds of plants, and the practice of grouping like kinds together under one common (generic) name, which is not only universal, but even a necessity, with those who, like the farmer and gardener, have much to do with a considerable number of plants of different sorts. People following these occupations have actually a system- PREFACE 9 atic botany, with a nomenclature, families, genera, and species, all their own. So then if, in the search for a possibly early botanical landmark, the writers upon farming, gardening, and medicine are to be passed by without serious consideration, it is not because no traces of genuine botany occur in them; it is because we are in search of him with whom the leading idea is that of a philosophy of plant life and form. The first botanist is the first man who under- takes research upon plants as plants rather than as things useful or deleterious to man and beast; and the first landmark in the his- tory of botany is the earliest book in which plants and plant organs are discussed each in relation to others. If there is any attempt to distinguish and define plant organs, or any suggestions about the probable functions of any of them, any indications of how plants may be distinguished from minerals on the one hand, and from animals on the other, any attempts to correlate plants as like and unlike, and that upon some recognized prin- ciples—in any and all such endeavors, we recognize the acti- vities of a philosophic mind in its attempts to solve problems not economic but scientific. In the author of any such treatise upon plants, however imperfect or even crude his notions may seem to us, we have nevertheless the author to whom belongs the name of botanist, as in the vocabulary of the sciences that name ought to be defined. What is here undertaken is not a history of botany. There is no purpose of presenting in chronological succession the long line of the contributors to the upbuilding of this science, w4th an account of the best contributions each has made. That would be the work of a lifetime; indeed, of two lifetimes; for the history of no science can be made out, and presented in its perspective, but by him who first of all has mastered that science itself, in its completeness ; and the domain of botany however philosophically restricted remains vast, insomuch that one lifetime seems requisite to the mastery of it in its several departments. A second lifetime should, then, be given to him who should be required to write its history. And still the presentation of a complete and accurate history of botany would remain impossible. Important data are wanting, and hopelessly so. For one example, more than two millenniums ago a highly philosophic and very extensive treatise upon plants was indited which alone among books of its kind has survived the pass- ing of all the centuries. The author of it cites other authors on the same topic whose books, then extant, are long since lost. This writer had also in early life a very illustrious teacher who instructed lO PREFACE him orally in botany among other subjects, and who also wrote two volumes of botany both of which passed into oblivion more than two thousand years since. How much, then, of the Theophrastan botany is that author's own? What of its principles are his only as having been imparted to him by his great friend and tutor Aristotle? What passages of the work are but compiled from writ- ings of a more remote antiquity, with which Theophrastus may have been familiar, of which even the authors' names have perished ? Questions like these serve but to admonish one of this, that the earliest beginnings of the science do not admit of discovery.