50 PERIOD III. 



with which the universities and botanic gardens of 

 Europe could but imperfectly cope. Linnaeus, who had 

 the instincts of a man of business, saw that botany was 

 falling- into confusion, and that the only remedy was a 

 quick and easy method, which could be mastered in a 

 few days and applied with certainty. No such method, 

 he well knew, could take into account all the intricate 

 affinities of plants, but to devise a perfect method 

 required the labours of generations of botanists ; mean- 

 while a temporary expedient, full of faults it might be, 

 would remove a pressing evil. Flowering plants had 

 been arranged by the divisions of the ovary, or by the 

 petals and sepals, with no very satisfactory results ; it 

 occurred to Linnaeus to try the number of the stamens 

 and styles. Any such method was bound to present 

 many anomalies, associating plants which are only 

 distantly related, and separating plants which are 

 closely related ; but some of the worst anomalies were 

 avoided and some well-established families (Crucifers, 

 Composites, Labiates) retained at the expense of sym- 

 metry. Not even the pressing need of simple defini- 

 tions, which was allowed to spoil so natural a group as 

 the Umbellifers, 1 could induce Linnaeus to place Ranun- 

 culus and Potentilla in the same class. 



Linnaeus gained currency for his system by connecting 

 it with the newly accepted doctrine of sexes in plants. 

 That doctrine was not conceived nor demonstrated by 

 him (see p. 48), and it had, as we now see, no further 

 connection with classification by stamens and styles 

 than that it explained the almost universal occurrence 

 of such parts in flowering plants. But Linnaeus had 

 persuaded himself that he had done more to establish 



1 By associating with them a number of alien genera. 



