The artist also would confer an advantage on his art by the study of Botany. It is on account of the utter neglect of any attention to vegetable forma that in almost all objects of art where plants are introduced they are ridiculously wrong. Not only are these mon strous caricatures of the vegetable kingdom introduced upon our walls, carpets, plates, dishes, saucers, &c., but into many of the great works of art. Paintings strictly correct in regard to general outline and colour are filled up with botanical impossibilities. The plants of tropical climates are found flourishing in the forests of Great Britain, and an Assyrian monarch is surrounded with the vegetation of the New World. Such anomalies could not exist if the artist studied as attentively the structure of the vegetable kingdom as he does that of the human body.
The study of Botany may be divided and pursued under the fol lowing heads : 1. The Chemistry of Plants, including a knowledge of the physical and chemical properties of the elements which enter into the compo sition of plants. [SEcEETIoNs, VEGETABLE.] 2. The Histology of Plants, including the facts connected with the origin of the vegetable cell, the various functions it performs, and its life in connection with others in the formation of organs. [CELL, VEGETABLE ; TISSUES, VEGETABLE.] 3. The Morphology of Plants, embracing the history of the origin and growth of the individual organs of plants, and the relation of all forms of organs to one another, and the laws which regulate the changes which the same organ undergoes in the same and in different families of plants. [STAMEN; PISTIL; SEED; FLOWER; FIIIIIT; OvULE.] 4. The Organology of Plants, including the general phenomena of the entire life of the plant, and the consideration of the relations which animals bear to plants, and the way in which they take part in the great changes going on in the surface of the earth. [STEM ; ItooT ;. LEAF.] 5. Systematic Botany, embracing the principles of classification and the arrangement of plants in groups according to their relations to each other. This department of botany has been only gradually developed. Under the heads of ExeaIs:1s, ENDOGENS, and ACROOENS will be found in this work the subdivisions proposed by the most recent writers on systematic botany. In order however to facilitate the student in discovering the order to which any plant he may possess belongs, we give here an analysis of the orders contained in the ENGLISH CYCLOP.EDIA upon the plan followed by Dr. Lindley in his ' Vegetable Kingdom.' It will be seen that many of the orders are repeated in this analysis under different divisions ; and this arises from the fact that this analysis is artificial, and only expresses the general characters of each order. Besides this, in the strongest orders, exceptions to some very general points of structure frequently occur. Thus we have apetaloua and irregular-flowered plants in the polypetaleua regular-flowered order Ranunculacar. With a little practice such an analysis as the foregoing will enable any one acquainted with the structure of plants to refer any particular plant to its right order, and on turning to the order in the alphabetical part of this work he will find a detailed account of its structure and properties.
Before concluding this general article it may not be uninteresting just to glance at the steps by which the Science of Botany, more particularly the systematic department, has attained its present position. In doing this we shall confine ourselves to a mere sketch of the progress that has been made in elucidating the great principles of Botany by which its rank as a branch of philosophy is to be determined.
It is obvious, from various passages in the most ancient writers, that the art of distinguishing certain plants having medical virtues was taught at the earliest period of which we have any written record ; and that the cultivation of something more than corn was already understood in the Homeric days, is sufficiently attested by the references to the vineyards of Laertes and the gardens of Alcinous, and by the employment assigned to Lycaon, the son of Priam, of pruning figs in his father's garden.
The earliest tangible evidence that we possess of the real state of knowledge upou this subject is afforded by the remains of the writings of Aristotle and his school. From the absurd superstitions of the
root-cutters (rhizotomi) of this period, it might be imagined that at this time botany was far from having any real existence; for it is to them that we have to trace the belief in the necessity of magical ceremonies and personal purification or preparation in collecting herbs : some sorts they tell us are to be cut against the wind, others after the body of the rhizotomist has been well oiled, some at night, some by (lay. Alliaceous food was a necessary preparation for procuring this herb, a draught of wine for that, and so on. But in fact at this very time the Peripatetic philosophers were in possession of a considerable mass of correct information concerning the nature of vegetable life, mixed up indeed with much that was fanciful and hypothetical, but calculated to give us a high opinion of their acuteness and of the amount of positive knowledge upon such subjects which had by that time been collected. It is by this school that botany must be con sidered to have been first formed into a science. Aristotle, in all probability, was its founder ; for it is obvious, from the remarks upon plants scattered through his books concerning animals, that his knowledge of vegetable physiology was for Alio day of a most remarkable kind. But as the books immediately concerning plants ascribed to this philosopher aro undoubted forgeries, it will be more convenient to take the works of Theophrastus as our principal guide to a determination of the state of botany at the commencement of this— The Brat Bra.—At the time when Theophrastua succeeded to the the chair of Aristotle (e.c. 324) no idea seems to have existed of classification, nor indeed was its necessity by any means apparent, for Theophrastus does not appear to have been acquainted with above 355 plants in all. In the application of their names, even to these, there was so much uncertainty, that the labours of commentators must be to a great extent bestowed in vain in endeavouring to elucidate them : for instance, Sprengel asserts that the name Aphako is applied indifferently to the dandelion and to a kind of vetch (Lathyrus aphaca), and Scorpios to a species of broom, to Arnica Scorpioida, and to a kind of ranunculus. But while Theophrastus was thus careless in his denominations of species, he has the great credit of having attended accurately to differences in the organs of plants, to some of which he gave new and special names ; the form of leaves, their margin, the manner of their indentation, and the nature of the leaf-stalk, especially attracted his attention. He distinguished naked-seeded from capsular plants, and be demonstrated the absence of all philosophical distinction between trees, shrubs, and herbs, for he saw that myrtle-trees would degenerate into shrubs, and certain olerseeoua plants become arborescent. Cellular tissue is spoken of as a sort of flesh interposed between the woody tissue or vegetable fibre ; and even spiral vessels appear to be indicated under the name of less ; leaves are correctly said to have their veins composed both of woody tissue and spiral vessels, and the parallelism of the veins of grasses is particularly pointed out ; palm-wood is shown to be extremely different from that of trees with concentric layers ; bark is correctly divided into liber and cortical integument, and the loss of the former is said to be usually destructive of life. The nutritive properties of leaves are clearly pointed out, and the power which both surfaces possess of absorbing atmospheric nourishment. Some notion appears to have existed of the sexes of plants, contrary to the opinion of Aristotle, who denied them to the vegetable kingdom. In particular Theophrastus speaks of the necessity of bringing the male dates into contact with the females, a fact which had been stated quite as clearly by Herodottus (i.193) 100 years before ; but it is plain that he had no correct idea upon this subject, for in another place he compares the male catkins of the hazel to the galls of the Kermes oak.