C. PERIOD II. 1694-1729
The second Period is ushered in with the publication of a French work,
_Les Élémens de Botanique_ by Tournefort[50], who was one of the greatest
botanists of the time. His object was—“to facilitate the knowledge of
plants and to disentangle a science which had been neglected because it
was found to be full of confusion and obscurity.” Up to this date all
plants were classified or listed as individual species. It was Tournefort
who first arranged them in groups which he designated “genera” and he
gave a careful diagnosis of each genus.
_Les Élémens_ was successful enough to warrant the publication a few
years later of a larger Latin edition entitled _Institutiones_[51]
and thus fitted for a wider circulation. Under the genus _Lichen_, he
included plants “lacking flowers but with a true cup-shaped shallow
fruit, with very minute pollen or seed which appeared to be subrotund
under the microscope.” Not only the description but the figures prove
that he was dealing with ascospores and not merely soredia, though
under _Lichen_ along with true members of the “genus” he has placed a
_Marchantia_, the moss _Splachnum_ and a fern. A few lichens were placed
by him in another genus _Coralloides_.
Tournefort’s system was of great service in promoting the study of
Botany: his method of classification was at once adopted by the German
writer Rupp[52] who published a Flora of plants from Jena. Among these
plants are included twenty-five species of lichens, several of which he
considered new discoveries, no fewer than five being some form of _Lichen
gelatinosus (Collema)_. Buxbaum[53], in his enumeration of plants from
Halle, finds place for forty-nine lichen species, with, in addition,
eleven species of _Coralloides_; and Vaillant[54] in listing the plants
that grew in the neighbourhood of Paris gives thirty-three species for
the genus _Lichen_ of which a large number are figured, among them
species of _Ramalina_, _Parmelia_, _Cladonia_, etc.
In England, however, Dillenius[55], who at this time brought out a third
edition of Ray’s _Synopsis_ and some years later his own _Historia
Muscorum_, still described most of his lichens as “Lichenoides” or
“Coralloides”; and no other work of note was published in our country
until after the Linnaean system of classification and of nomenclature was
introduced.
D. PERIOD III. 1729-1780
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