Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/113

 perspicuity and precision, and in copiousness of material; and indeed it would be difficult to find in the ninety years after 1781 a text-book of botany which treats what was known on the subject at each period with equal clearness and completeness. In giving the reader some idea of the way in which Linnaeus deals with his subject, it will be well to pass over the first two chapters, which discuss the literature and the various systems which had been proposed, and turn to the third, which under the heading 'Plantae' treats of the general nature of plants, and specially of the organs of vegetation. The vegetable world, says Linnaeus, comprises seven families, Fungi, Algae, Mosses, Ferns, Grasses, Palms, and Plants. All are composed of three kinds of vessels, sap-vessels which convey the fluids, tubes which store up the sap in their cavities, and tracheae which take in air; these statements Linnaeus adopts from Malpighi and Grew. He gives no characteristic marks for the Fungi; of the Algae he says that in them root, leaf, and stem are all fused together; to the Mosses he ascribes an anther without a filament, and separate from the female flower which has no pistil; the seeds of the Mosses have no integument or cotyledons; this characteristic of the Mosses is explained in his paper entitled 'Semina Muscorum' in the 'Amoenitates Academicae,' ii. The Ferns are marked by the fructification on the under side of the fronds, which are therefore not conceived of as leaves. The very simple leaves, the jointed stalk, the 'calyx glumosus,' and the single seed mark the Grasses. The simple stem, the rosette of leaves at the summit, and the spathe of the inflorescence are characteristic of the Palms. All vegetable forms which do not belong to any of the previous families he names Plants. He rejects the customary division into herbs, shrubs, and trees as unscientific. This arrangement of the vegetable kingdom must not be confounded with Linnaeus' fragment of a natural system, in which he adopts sixty-seven families (orders), the Fungi, Algae, Mosses, and Ferns forming each a family. He