The first of Cesalpino’s sixteen books ends with this general view of his system. The remaining fifteen books contain about 600 pages of descriptions of individual plants arranged in fifteen classes; some of the descriptions are exceedingly minute; the trees come first, and are followed by the shrubs on account of their affinity (‘ob affinitatem’). Two things have interfered with the recognition and acceptance of this system; the omission of a general view to precede the text, and its appearance in the traditional form of books and chapters, such as we find in de l’Écluse, Dodoens, and Bauhin, instead of in classes and orders, though it is true that the headings and introductions to the several books contain the designations and general characteristics of the classes described in them. Linnaeus has done good service by giving in his ‘Classes Plantarum’ a general view of all the systems proposed before his time, among which he gives the first rank to that of Cesalpino; he has also pointed out the peculiar characteristics of each system, and has appended to the old names of the genera those with which he has himself made us familiar. This invaluable work, which is a key to the understanding of the efforts that were made in systematic botany from Cesalpino to Linnaeus himself, will often be referred to in later pages of this history; it will supply us here with a tabular view of Cesalpino’s main divisions as precisely formulated by Linnaeus, which is well worth the space it will occupy, as presenting the first plan proposed for a systematic arrangement of the vegetable kingdom, with characters for each division. For the better understanding of these diagnoses it should be remembered that the ‘cor’ (heart) is the important point in the seed with Cesalpino, and that it is the place in the embryo where the radicle and the plumule unite, as has been said in a former page; Cesalpino himself says somewhat inexactly, the place from which the cotyledons spring. The characters of the classes are given, for brevity’s sake, in Latin. ARBOREAE (Arbores et frutices). I. Corde ex apice seminis. Seminibus saepius solitariis (e.g. Quercus, Fagus, Ulmus, Tilia, Laurus, Prunus). II. Corde e basi seminis, seminibus pluribus (e.g. Ficus, Cactus, Morus, Rosa, Vitis, Salix, Coniferae, etc.). HERBACEAE (Suffrutices et herbae). III. Solitariis seminibus. Semine in fructibus unico (e.g. Valeriana, Daphne, Urtica, Cyperus, Gramineae). IV. Solitariis pericarpiis. Seminibus in fructu pluribus, quibus est conceptaculum carnosum, bacca aut pomum (e.g. Cucurbitaceae, Solaneae, Asparagus, Ruscus, Arum). V. Solitariis vasculis. Seminibus in fructu pluribus quibus est conceptaculum e siccâ materiâ (e.g. various Leguminosae, Caryophylleae, Gentianeae, etc.). VI. Binis seminibus. Semina sub singulo flosculo invicem conjuncta, ut unicum videantur ante maturitatem; cor in parte superiore, quâ flos insidet. Flores in umbellâ (Umbelliferae).