BOTAL, or BOTALLI, LIONARDO, a celebrated physician, was a native of Asti in Piedmont, and flourished in the latter part of the sixteenth century. After studying under Fallopius he went to France, where he was appointed chief physician to Charles IX., and also to the Duke of Alençon, whom he accompanied to England. Subsequently he was physician to Henry III. Botalli, relying on the authority of Hippocrates, Galen, and the Arabian physicians, carried the practice of blood-letting to an extent that occasioned much animadversion, and perhaps with justice. He made some valuable contributions, however, to the science. The best editions of his several medical and surgical works is that published by Van Hoorne at Leyden, 1660, 8vo.

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1. "Egotism and vanity," says he, in his Letter published in 1785, "are the indigenous plants of my mind; they distinguish it. I may prune their luxuriance, but I must not entirely clear it of them: for then I should be no longer as I am, and perhaps there might be something not so good." Botany. The term Botany is derived from the Greek word Βοτάνη, meaning an herb or grass. As a science it includes everything relating to the vegetable kingdom, whether in a living or in a fossil state. Its object is not, as some have supposed, merely to name and arrange the vegetable productions of the globe. It embraces a consideration of the external forms of plants—of their anatomical structure, however minute—of the functions which they perform—of their arrangement and classification—of their distribution over the globe at the present and at former epochs, and of the uses to which they are subservient. It examines the plant in its earliest state of development, when it appears as a simple cell, and follows it through all its stages of progress until it attains maturity. It takes a comprehensive view of all the plants which cover the earth, from the minutest lichen or moss, only visible by the aid of the microscope, to the most gigantic productions of the tropics. It marks the relations which subsist between all members of the vegetable world, and traces the mode in which the most despised weeds contribute to the growth of the mighty denizens of the forest. It is a science, then, which demands careful and minute investigations—requires great powers of observation and research, and is well fitted to train the mental powers to vigorous and prompt action.

Botany may be divided into the following departments:

1. Structural Botany, having reference to the anatomical structure of the various parts of plants, including vegetable Histology, or the microscopic examination of tissues. 2. Morphological Botany, or the study of the form of plants and their organs; these two departments are often included under the general term of Organography. 3. Physiological Botany, by some termed organology, the study of the life of the entire plant and its organs, or the consideration of the functions of the living plant. 4. Taxological Botany, or the arrangement and classification of plants. 5. Geographical Botany, the consideration of the mode in which plants are distributed over the different quarters of the globe. 6. Paleontological Botany, the study of the forms and structures of the plants found in a fossil state in the various strata of which the earth is composed.

PART I.

STRUCTURAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL BOTANY;

on,