Vegetable morphology : its history and present condition / by Maxwell T. Masters.

  • Masters, Maxwell Tylden, 1833-1907.
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vegetable morphology : its history and present condition / by Maxwell T. Masters. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    I II reasouiug, a method of jn-ocedure of the higliest possible value, and as such laid down as a canon to be followed whenever it is possible to do so, by De Candolle, Jussieu, and all eminent botanists. From this time up to the time of Albertus Magnus there was little or no pi’o- gress, but on the contrary, much retrogression in botany, as in other branches of learning. Albert, a Dominican friar, who died in 1280, was, for the age in which he lived, an intellectual giant, and possessed enlarged ideas on botanical as on other subjects. Speaking of life as manifested in plants, he says—“ It is only evidenced in the functions of growth, of imbibing nourishment, and of rejtroduction, and with these circumscribed limits coiTespond the nearly homologous nature both of the external and internal parts of plants, and the powers which they possess of reproducing their kind from any part whatsoever, as well as by seed.”* It is not necessary here to do more than mention the numerous systematic writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as the way in which they treated their subject has little bearing on the theory of moi’phology. It will suffice merely to say, that they in general speak of what we now call petals as folia. Joachim Jung, professor at Hamburgh, who died in 1657, has shown in his works that he possessed opinions on the subject of morjjhology which would meet with acceptance in the present day, in evidence of which may be cited the following extracts from his ‘ Doxoscopia.” He thus defines the stem—“ Quicquid Jlorem fert aut fructum est caulis. In alluding to what we should now call compound flowers with tubular florets, he says, “Sunt etflores quidam /also sta/niinei dicti, qui reciius exfosculis cavis sivefb'tulosis OA'cte farcti, sive tubulosi, dicer&iitur, sta- minei did possunt qui solis staminibus constant.” In the chapter on the flower, after stating that leaves are not only flat, and have definite breadth, but are occasionally hollow and cylindrical, he continues— Ita quoque inter folia florea recenseri possunt et recensentur etiani quce interminatam sive in se recurrentem habent latitudinem” So also in ‘ Isagoge Phytoscopica,” published after the author’s decease by J, agetus, the distinction between root and stem, the diflference between eaves and foliaceous bi’anches, the transition from the ordinary leaves 0 t e folia floris, and the true nature of the involucre, are all clearly explained. _ As for the flower, it consists, says he—Imis. Vel ex plants foliis, fiqura ac situ similihus uti flos Tvlipoe. 2dis. Ex Mm m^nsplanis, sedfgurd ac situ diversis ut Jlos Iriduni Gladioli. otiis. Exfohxs quasi plcmis et corniculis ut in Aquilegid.” After this time, and until 1759, when Wolf published his ‘Theoria enerationis, there seems to be little worthy of record in the history of I very I’emarkable works of Wolf have been so lange y neglected, that their great merits are even now hardly 1 pieciated. Ihe most noteworthy facts relating to the treatise just researches into the development of the flower; (^lu le opened up a new line of investigation the full importance IJutiuiy’’—rmol l -Meyer's History ‘ly a most viiluuble eoiuribuliou to the History ol'Jioluiiy.