Transcriber’s Notes
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.Variations in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but allother spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.
The Errata have been implemented.
The cover was prepared by the transcriber and is placed in thepublic domain.
HISTORY OF BOTANY
SACHS
London
HENRY FROWDE
Oxford University Press Warehouse
Amen Corner, E.C.
HISTORY OF BOTANY
(1530-1860)
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 distinctbranches of knowledge, Classification founded on Morphology,Phytotomy, and Vegetable Physiology. Allthese strive towards a common end, a perfect understandingof the vegetable kingdom, but they differ entirelyfrom one another in their methods of research, andtherefore presuppose essentially different intellectual endowments.That this is the case is abundantly shown bythe history of the science, from which we learn that up toquite recent times morphology and classification havedeveloped in almost entire independence of the other twobranches. Phytotomy has indeed always maintained acertain connection with physiology, but where principlespeculiar to each of them, fundamental questions, had tobe dealt with, there they also went their way in almostentire independence of one another. It is only in thepresent day that a deeper conception of the problemsof vegetable life has led to a closer union betweenthe three. I have sought to do justice to this historicalfact by treating the parts of my subject separately; but inthis case, if the present work was to be kept within suitablelimits, it became necessary to devote a strictly limitedspace only to each of the three historical delineations. Itis obvious that the weightiest and most important matteronly could find a place in so narrow a frame, but this I dovinot exactly regard as a misfortune, and in the interests ofthe reader it is rather an advantage; for, in accordancewith the objects of the ‘General History of the Sciences,’this History of Botany is not intended for professionalpersons only, but for a wider circle of readers, and tothese perhaps even the details presented in it may hereand there seem wearisome.
The style of the narrative might have been freer, andgreater space might have been allotted to reflections on theinner connection of the whole subject, if I had had beforeme better preliminary studies in the history of botany;but as things are, I have found myself especially occupiedin ascertaining qu