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BOTALLI BOTANY 131 columns with "Wycliffe's Version of 1380, and Tyndale's of 1526 " (1865). BOTALLI, Leonardo, a Piedmontese physician, born at Asti about 1530. He was educated at Pavia, and went to France in 1561, where he acquired celebrity by his controversies with the faculty of Paris on the subject of bloodletting. In 1571 he was appointed physician in ordi- nary to Elizabeth, queen of Charles IX., and afterward to Catharine de' Medici. He wrote a number of important medical works, includ- ing De Catarrfto, De Lue Venerea, De Curan- dis Vulneribus Sclopetorum, De Via Sanguinis a Dextro in Sinutrum Cordis Ventriculum, and De Curatione per Sanguinis Miisionem. His chief claim to distinction at present rests upon a singular error, namely, the description in the fourth of the works enumerated above of an exceptional case in which the foramen ovale, between the right and left auricles of the heart, remained open in the adult. Botalli sup- posed this to be a normal appearance, and de- scribed it accordingly as a natural opening, giving passage to the arterial blood into the left auricle ; while in reality it exists, as a gen- eral rule, only in the fetus, and when present in the adult does not allow the blood to pass through it. It is still known, however, as the " foramen of Botal." BOTANY (Gr. POT&VTJ, a plant or vegetable), the division of natural science which treats of plants. The history and bibliography of the science will be treated in this article; for a general account of plants and their organism, see PLANT. As a plant in its typical form is composed of organs, as roots, stem, leaves, &c., which have each a part to perform in the life of the individual, a study of vegetable physiol- ogy must be the foundation of botanical knowl- edge. This important division of botany treats of these organs in their most intimate structure, a study only possible by the improve- ments in the microscope and in organic chem- istry. Vegetable anatomy dissects the plant, opens the structure of the root, stem, bark, and leaves, or studies the special organs (organ- ography), and the various forms which these or- gans assume for different functions (morpholo- gy), as where the leaf becomes a petal, a sta- men, or a carpel, yet preserving all the while its identity. The botanist also examines the functions of all the organs, the order and mode of their development, and finally those derange- ments of plant life which are followed, as in the animal, by death of a part or of the whole (nosology). The vast number and variety of plants existing on the globe require a knowl- edge of some system of classification, and sys- tematic botany supplies the want with a rigor- ous method by which all plants wherever found rnay at once be placed in a definite position in the order adopted. As plants are not scattered haphazard over the earth, botanical geography must be studied, and with this plant history, using the fossil remains of plants of former geo- logical ages for the purpose. Botany may then be applied to the wants of every-day life, as in agriculture, horticulture, or medical botany. Animals often exhibit a marvellous instinct in selecting medicinal herbs, and- observation of their habits has often, even in the present time, led to valuable discoveries. The fragmentary history we have of the study of nature by the an- cients indicates a much greater knowledge than is recorded; for instance, in the well known paradox of the Greek philosophers that plants are only inverted animals a statement that certainly required an extensive knowledge of the phenomena of vegetation. The collected descriptions of known plants, however, were very limited, the Hebrew Scriptures containing names of about 70 species which can be identi- fied, besides some others. Hippocrates of Cos (about 400 B. C.) described briefly about 200 medicinal plants; Theophrastus, the pupil of Aristotle, describes about 400; Dioscorides (about A. D. 100) treats of about 600 species, of which fewer than 150 have been recognized. Pliny the Elder, in his Historia Naturalu, devotes 16 books to botany, describing almost 1,000 plants ; but from his unscientific descrip- tions many cannot now be identified. The Arabian travellers added about 200 oriental plants to the 1,200 known before the 9th cen- tury. Jean Bauhin (born in 1541) wrote a universal history of plants, describing more than 5,000 species, illustrated by 3,577 figures; and later his brother endeavored to arrange the 6,000 plants then known. Linnseus de- scribed in his first edition of the Systema Na- tures 7,300 species, and in the second 8,800; and at his death in 1778, 11,800 were known. The influence of his example on his many pupils rapidly increased the number of known plants, until in the time of Jussieu 20,000 had been described ; and the number at present known is at least 100,000. With so vast a collection the botanist would be overwhelmed had he not some methodical arrangement; and as the history of the various devices invented by botanists to order and catalogue their rapidly increasing stores is an important part of hot- any, it may be considered, after a brief sketch of the labors and discoveries of the early bot- anists. The ancients recorded many botani- cal observations which do not seem to have been productive of results ; although Herodotus (book i., 193) mentions the fact that in Baby- lonia the flowers of the male palm were tied to those that bear fruit " in order that the fly en- tering the date may ripen it, lest otherwise the fruit fall before maturity : for the males have flies in the fruit, just like wild fig trees." The seeds of palms were still undiscovered. Aris- totle wrote two books on plants, known only from Latin and Arabic versions. Theophras- tus taught that there was no philosophical dis- tinction between trees, shrubs, and plants. He noticed the difference between palm wood and that of trees with concentric rings, a point used as the first distinction in the clas- sification of flowering plants only within the