Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/43

 trees. 'Fructus' is that in which the seed is formed, but frequently it is itself the seed, as where the latter is not enclosed in anything else and is formed naked. We must not be led by these words to think of our Gymnosperms, but must understand that here, as with all botanists till the time of A. L. de Jussieu and Joseph Gärtner (1788), naked seeds mean dry indehiscent fruits.

De l'Obel, from whom especially we might have looked for similar explanations, has given none.

The absence of more profound comparative examination of the parts of plants, as shown in the examples of terminology here adduced, may serve as an additional support of the assertion, that natural affinity was not inferred from exact comparison of the form of organs, but was the result of a feeling arising from the likeness of habit directly apprehended by the senses, that is by the collective impression produced by the whole plant.

Passing to the consideration of the attempts in systematic botany made by the Germans in this period, the chief thing to notice is, that the division into the main groups of trees, shrubs, undershrubs, and herbs was the one generally adopted; these groups were borrowed from antiquity and were maintained even by the special systematists, from Cesalpino to the beginning of the 18th century; nor was any change made in principle when these four groups were reduced to three or two (trees and herbs). It was moreover considered to be self-evident that trees were the most perfect plants. Hence when relationship is spoken of in subsequent remarks, it must be understood that this holds good only within the groups just mentioned. The classifications of the German and Dutch botanists not only sprang from the describing of individual plants, but they were originally in a certain sense identical with it. In undertaking to describe individual forms, the first task was to separate those which closely resembled one another, for the resemblance of