MAKERS OF BRITISH BOTANY;

The literature of Botany can be traced back to a quite respectable antiquity,

to the period of Aristotle (b.c. 384-322) who seems to have been the first to

write of plants from the truly botanical point of view. Unfortunately, his

special treatise on plants¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿is lost; and although there

are many botanical passages scattered throughout his other writings

(which have been collected by Wimmer, Phytologiae Aristotelicae

Fragmenta, 1836), yet none of them gives any indication of what his ideas

of classification may have been. An echo of them is perhaps to be found in

the works of his favourite pupil, Theophrastus Eresius (b.c. 371-286), who

among all his fellows was the most successful in pursuing the botanical

studies that they had begun under the guidance of the master.

Theophrastus left behind him two important, though incomplete, treatises

on plants, the oldest that have survived: the more familiar Latin titles of

which are De Historia Plantarum and [De Causis Plantarum]. The latter is

essentially physiological, touching upon agriculture to a certain extent: the

former is mainly morphological, structural, descriptive, and it is here that

the first attempt at a classification of plants is to be found. In writing the

Historia, Theophrastus was endeavouring, as a Greek philosopher rather

than as a botanist, to "give account of" plants; and in order to do so he

found it necessary to arrange them in some kind of order.