Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/57

 CHAPTER II.

1583–1760

botany was being developed in Germany and the Netherlands in the manner described in the previous chapter, and long before this process of development reached its furthest point in Kaspar Bauhin, in Italy was laying down the general plan, on which the further advance of descriptive botany was to proceed in the 17th and till far into the 18th century; all that was done in the 17th century in Germany, England, and France towards furthering morphology and systematic botany was done with a reference to Cesalpino's principles, whether these were accepted and made use of, or whether it was sought to refute them. This connection with Cesalpino became gradually less close and less obvious, being concealed by new points of view and by the increase of material for observation; but Cesalpino's ideas on the theoretical principles of systematic botany and the nature of plants appear so plainly, even in the views of Linnaeus, that no one can read both authors without lighting not unfrequently upon passages in Linnaeus' 'Fundamenta' or in his 'Philosophia Botanica,' which remind him of Cesalpino, and even upon sentences borrowed from him. As we saw in Kaspar Bauhin the close of the course of development commenced by Fuchs and Bock, so we may regard Linnaeus as having built up and completed the edifice of doctrine founded by Cesalpino.