The Natural History of Plants

Bücher

Angebote / Angebote:

Excerpt from The Natural History of Plants: Their Forms, Growth, Reproduction, and Distribution From the sixteenth to the latter part of the eighteenth century, "Historia plantarum" was the customary title for botanical works. Most of the scholars of that time took as their authorities and models the writings of Theophrastus, the celebrated pupil of Aristotle, together with the thirty-seven books constituting Pliny's "Historia naturalis." Thus it came about that the titles of the new books were similar to those of Theophrastus and Pliny. However, all these books are anything but histories of plants, if in the idea of a history we include an account of the changes which occur within the limits of space and time. In reality the bulky folios of Clusius, Bauhin, and Haller, the title-pages of which bear the inscription "Historia plantarum, " contain descriptions merely of the external characters of plants, accompanied by only sparing details of the situations in which these plants had been found growing wild. Works of this kind, dealing with limited areas of country, were later on distinguished by the name of Floras. By this name they are still known. Although the authors of the Flora had no such purpose in view, their works furnished the starting-point for a real history of the vegetable world. A comparison of the Floras of neighbouring regions shows that certain plants inhabit a greater, others a lesser area, that the boundaries of the species confined to a distinct district coincide with territories inhabited by various races of mankind, that the boundaries of this and that species coincide and stand in relation to various climatic and other conditions. All plants have the power of propagating themselves. They send their offspring forth as colonists towards all points of the compass, and endeavour in this way to enlarge their areas of distribution. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.