Resolving confusion

摘要

In the fourth article in his series, Brent Elliott examines the effects of floral dissection and new taxonomic systems in the early 18th century. AS WE have seen in previous articles, botanical illustration reached, what might have seemed, its peak ofachievement with the work of Nicolas Robert in the 17th century. But while it might not have been possible for botanical art to improve, it could still be developed in new directions, and the major innovation of the next generation was to find ways of adapting it to the purposes of the emergent discipline of plant taxonomy. The Comte de Mouton-Fontenille published a little-known, but very useful, work entitled Tableau des ssstemes de botanique, in 1798, in which he compared 49 different systems of plant classification that had been proposed by his day. The details of these systems are now of interest only to historians; the point is their proliferation -- the sheer number of conflicting ways of classifying plants that grew up in the late 17th and 18th centuries.