Kaspar Bauhin[1], as regards both the naming and describing of individual plants and their classification according to likeness of habit. In Bauhin all secondary considerations have disappeared; his works may be called botanical in the strict scientific meaning of the word, and they show how far it is possible to advance in a descriptive science without the aid of a general system of comparative morphology, and how far the mere perception of likeness of habit is a sufficient foundation for a natural classification of plants; it was scarcely possible to make greater advances on the path pursued by the botanists of Germany and the Netherlands.
The descriptions of species in the 'Prodromus Theatri Botanici' of Kaspar Bauhin (1620) notice all obvious parts of the plant with all possible brevity and in a fixed order; the form of the root, height and form of the stem, characters of the leaves, flowers, fruit, and seed are given in concise sentences seldom occupying more than twenty short lines; the description of a single species is here in fact developed into an art and becomes a diagnosis.
A still higher value must be set on the fact, that in Kaspar Bauhin the distinction between species and genus is fully and consciously carried out; every plant has with him a generic and a specific name, and this binary nomenclature, which Linnaeus is usually thought to have founded, is almost perfectly maintained by Bauhin, especially in the 'Pinax'; it is true that a third and fourth word is not unfrequently appended to the second, the specific name, but this additional word is evidently only an auxiliary. It is remarkable on the other hand, that he has added no characters to the names of the
- ↑ Kaspar Bauhin was born at Basle in 1550, and like his elder brother John studied under Fuchs; he collected plants in Switzerland, Italy, and France, and became professor in Basle; he died in 1624. Some account is given of him and of his brother by Haller in the preface to his 'Historia Stirpium Heletiae' (1768), and by Sprengel in his 'Geschichte der Botanik,' i. p. 364 (1818).
