Agnes Arber (1879–1960) was a prominent British botanist specialising in plant morphology, who focused her research on the monocotyledon group of flowering plants. She was the first female botanist to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, in 1946. This volume, first published as part of the Cambridge Botanical Handbooks series in 1925, provides an anatomical and comparative study of the monocotyledon group of plants with an analysis of the methods and objects of studying plant morphology. At the time of publication, comparative anatomy and morphology were the centre of botanical investigation; however there were differences between British and continental biologists concerning the aims of morphological study. In the introduction to this volume Arber reconciled these views by describing a distinction between pure and applied morphology, interpreting the differences in monocotyledonous species in light of this. The book contains an extensive bibliography and 160 figures.
When she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1946, Agnes Arber (1879–1960) was one of only three women to have been admitted into the institution. Arber conducted research that focused mainly on the morphology of flowering plants, but her work is characterised by its explorations of historical botany and evolution. First published in 1950, this book widens the scope of morphology into a study of all aspects of form across the whole chronology of botany. Arber begins with Aristotle and investigates the work of early modern botanists like Bacon and Goethe, before examining the effects of this wider approach on subjects like evolution and taxonomy. Arguing that post-Darwinian doctrine often causes botanists to twist their observations to suit a hypothetical history of phylogenesis, rather than changing the hypothesis to suit observational facts, this bold and fascinating text will interest students of biology and philosophy alike.
Agnes Arber (1879–1960) was a prominent British botanist specialising in plant morphology and comparative anatomy. In 1946, she became the first female botanist to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. First published in 1920, this volume provides a detailed anatomical study of aquatic flowering plants, with a discussion of their evolutionary history. Arber describes the general anatomical and reproductive organs, life histories and physiological adaptations of aquatic plants in detail, with interpretations informed from her previous experimental work. The final section of this volume discusses the evolutionary history of aquatic plants in the light of affinities to terrestrial flowering plants. Arber's account of aquatic plants was the first general description of these plants published, and provides a classic example of the comparative anatomy studies which were central to botanical investigation during the early twentieth century. An extensive bibliography and over 170
Agnes Arber (1879–1960) was a prominent British botanist specialising in plant morphology and comparative anatomy. In 1946 she became the first female botanist to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. First published in 1934, this volume provides a detailed comparative study of the Gramineae family of plants, which includes cereals, grasses and bamboos. Arber focuses on the general morphological features of these plants as shown by anatomical analysis, describing their life cycles, reproductive and vegetative phases, and embryology. The Gramineae family contains vitally important food plants such as wheat, millet and rice, leading Arber to begin her study with the history of human interaction with these plants. It was the first published general description of these important plants, and remains a classic example of comparative anatomical analysis. The book contains over 200 figures and an extensive bibliography.
Agnes Arber (1879–1960) was a prominent British botanist specialising in plant morphology and the history of botany. In 1946 she became the first female botanist to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. First published in 1912 and issued in an expanded second edition in 1938, this volume traces the history and development of printed herbals between 1470 and 1670. This two-hundred-year period was the most prolific for the publication of herbals, and significantly saw the emergence of botany as a scientific discipline within the study of natural history. Although Arber mentions the medical aspects of the herbal, her analysis remains focused on investigating herbals from a botanical view, with chapters devoted to the evolution of plant descriptions, classifications and illustrations. Her book remains the standard work on this subject. The text of this volume is taken from a 1953 reissue of the 1938 second edition.
Agnes Arber's international reputation is due in part to her exceptional ability to interpret the German tradition of scholarship for the English-speaking world. The Mind and the Eye is an erudite book, revealing its author's familiarity with philosophy from Plato and Aristotle through Aquinas to Kant and Hegel; but it is not dull, because the quiet enthusiasm of the author shines through. In this book she turns from the work of a specialist in one science to those wider questions which any scientist must ask at intervals. What, in short, is the relationship between the eye that sees and the mind that weighs and pronounces? An important feature of this Cambridge Science Classics reissue is the introduction provided by Professor P. R. Bell, who as a Cambridge botany student at the time that Agnes Arber was writing The Natural Philosopby of Plant Form, is uniquely able to set The Mind and the Eye in the context of contemporary biological research.
Herbals deal primarily with medicinal and culinary herbs, their real and supposed properties and virtues, and in origin they go back at least to the Ancient Greeks. During the 16th and 17th centuries they developed into attractively illustrated printed books, the forerunners of modern botanical and pharmaceutical textbooks. Agnes Arber's Herbals (first published in 1912, much revised in 1938) stands as the major survey of the period 1470 to 1670 when botany evolved into a scientific discipline separate from herbalism, a development reflected in contemporary herbals. Every work on herbals since 1912 has been indebted to Arber's classic. The present volume in the Cambridge Science Classics series, while retaining her main text unaltered, supplements this with two of her later writings on herbals, provides a biographical introduction, greatly extends the bibliography and has annotations modifying the original text through later enquiry. This added material will make this re-issue
