Matroid theory has its origin in a paper by H. Whitney entitled "On the abstract properties of linear dependence" 35], which appeared in 1935. The main objective of the paper was to establish the essential (abstract) properties of the concepts of linear dependence and independence in vector spaces, and to use these for the axiomatic definition of a new algebraic object, namely the matroid. Furthermore, Whitney showed that these axioms are also abstractions of certain graph-theoretic concepts. This is very much in evidence when one considers the basic concepts making up the structure of a...