16 Mr. Roscoz on Artificial and Natural 
confounded with each other. The one commences its observa- 
tions with the obvious and exterior appearances of plants ; and, 
seizing upon the most striking characters, immediately arranges 
them into their different classes and families. No distinctions are 
employed but such as are visible, and present; and wherever the 
plant is seen in its perfect state, ‚bears upon it its own name 
and character. As the means thus employed are confined to the 
exterior of the plant, so the object in view is limited to the mere 
knowledge of its proper appellation; and as soon as that is 
attained, ‚the purpose of an artificial system is complete.—A real 
natural system, on the other hand, if such a one should ever be 
practicable, -must be founded on a long and intimate acquaint- 
ance with the nature of plants, their habits and places of growth, 
the form and qualities of their seed, the manner of their evolution, 
increase, and reproduction, the peculiarities of their radication, 
their interior substance, whether medullary or concentric, the in- 
finitely varied formation of their yascular system, by which the 
plant is not only enabled to circulate the juices necessary to its 
support, but to elicit those peculiar qualities of acids, salts, 
gums, resins, and aroma, by which they are distinguished, and on 
which their natural combinations so ultimately depend. When 
these facts are sufficiently developed, the system then proceeds 
to arrange the individuals of the vegetable kingdom, not by their 
exterior phenomena, but by those primitive and secret alliances 
by which nature has bound them together; uniting such as are 
most nearly allied, and separating such as have no inherent affinity 
to each other. In an artificial system, some plain and obvious 
distinction, such for instance as the number of the stamina, is 
decisive of the character. In a natural system this must depend 
on some more remote circumstance, such as the mode of germi- 
nation of the plant, and which, though deeply founded in nature, 
cannot 
