Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/55

 first and for that time a completely exhaustive book of synonyms, and is still indispensable for the history of individual species—no small praise to be given to a work that is more than 250 years old.

It would not have been unsuitable to the purpose of the author of the 'Pinax,' if he had allowed himself to give the plants in alphabetical order, but instead of this we find a careful arrangement according to natural affinities. This directly proves what is also confirmed by the 'Prodromus,' that Bauhin regarded such an arrangement as of the greatest importance. In this point, as in others, he goes far beyond his predecessors; he pursues the same method as de l'Obel had pursued forty years before, but he carries it out more thoroughly. At the same time he shares with his predecessors the peculiarity of not distinguishing the larger groups, which with some exceptions answer to our present families, by special names or by descriptions; it is only from the order in which the species follow one another that we can gather his views on natural relationship. It follows therefore that the natural families, so far as they are distinguishable in Bauhin's works, have no sharp bounding lines; we might almost conclude that he purposely avoided assigning such limits, that he might be able to pass without interruption from one chain of relationship to another.

Like de l'Obel, Bauhin proceeds in his enumeration from the supposed most imperfect to the more perfect forms, beginning with the Grasses and the majority of Liliaceae and Zingiberaceae, passing on to dicotyledonous herbs, and ending with shrubs and trees.

The Cryptogams that were known to him stand in the middle of the series of dicotyledonous herbs, between the Papilionaceae and the Thistles, the Equisetaceae being reckoned among the Grasses. On the great distinction between Cryptogams and Phanerogams the views of Bauhin were evidently less clear than those of many of his predecessors; but it will not seem strange that he should place some Phanerogams, as for