Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/76

 among which he gives the first rank to that of Cesalpino; he has also pointed out the peculiar characteristics of each system, and has appended to the old names of the genera those with which he has himself made us familiar. This invaluable work, which is a key to the understanding of the efforts that were made in systematic botany from Cesalpino to Linnaeus himself, will often be referred to in later pages of this history; it will supply us here with a tabular view of Cesalpino's main divisions as precisely formulated by Linnaeus, which is well worth the space it will occupy, as presenting the first plan proposed for a systematic arrangement of the vegetable kingdom, with characters for each division. For the better understanding of these diagnoses it should be remembered that the 'cor' (heart) is the important point in the seed with Cesalpino, and that it is the place in the embryo where the radicle and the plumule unite, as has been said in a former page; Cesalpino himself says somewhat inexactly, the place from which the cotyledons spring.

The characters of the classes are given, for brevity's sake, in Latin.

(Arbores et frutices).

I. Corde ex apice seminis. Seminibus saepius solitariis (e.g. Quercus, Fagus, Ulmus, Tilia, Laurus, Prunus).

II. Corde e basi seminis, seminibus pluribus (e.g. Ficus, Cactus, Morus, Rosa, Vitis, Salix, Coniferae, etc.).

(Suffrutices et herbae).

III. Solitariis seminibus. Semine in fructibus unico (e.g. Valeriana, Daphne, Urtica, Cyperus, Gramineae).

IV. Solitariis pericarpiis. Seminibus in fructu pluribus, quibus est conceptaculum carnosum, bacca aut pomum (e.g. Cucurbitaceae, Solaneae, Asparagus, Ruscus, Arum).

V. Solitariis vasculis. Seminibus in fructu pluribus quibus