REFORM OF LINX^US. 403 



Plantarum, which first introduced the specific names, made me a Lin- 

 naean completely." In 1763, he introduced the system in his lectures 

 at Cambridge, and these were the first Linnasan lectures in England. 

 Stillingfleet had already, in 1757, and Lee, in 1760, called the attention 

 of English readers to Linnaeus. Sir J. Hill, (the king's gardener at 

 Kew,) in his flora Britannica, published in 1760, had employed the 

 classes and generic characters, but not the nomenclature ; but the latter 

 was adopted by Hudson, in 1762, in the Flora Anglica. 



Two young Swedes, pupils of Linnaeus, Dryander and Solander, set- 

 tled in England, and were in intimate intercourse with the most active 

 naturalists, especially with Sir Joseph Banks, of whom the former was 

 librarian, and the latter a fellow-traveller in Cook's celebrated voyage. 

 James Edward Smith was also one of the most zealous disciples of the 

 Linnsean school ; and, after the death of Linnaeus, purchased his Her- 

 bariums and Collections. It is related, 33 as a curious proof of the high 

 estimation in which Linnaeus was held, that when the Swedish govern- 

 ment heard of this bargain, they tried, though too late, to prevent 

 these monuments of their countryman's labor and glory being carried 

 from his native land, and even went so far as to send a frigate in pur- 

 suit of the ship which conveyed them to England. Smith had, how- 

 ever, the triumph of bringing them home in safety. On his death 

 they were purchased by the Linnaean Society. Such relics serve, as 

 will easily be imagined, not only to warm the reverence of his admi- 

 rers, but to illustrate his writings : and since they have been in this 

 country, they have been the object of the pilgrimage of many a bota- 

 nist, from every part of Europe. 



I have purposely confined myself to the history of the Linnaean sys- 

 tem in the cases in which it is most easily applicable, omitting all 

 consideration of more obscure and disputed kinds of vegetables, as 

 ferns, mosses, fungi, lichens, sea-weeds, and the like. The nature and 

 progress of a classificatory science, which it is our main purpose to 

 bring into view, will best be understood by attending, in the first 



d O' 



place, to the cases in which such a science has been pursued with the 

 most decided success ; and the advances which have been made m the 

 knowledge of the more obscure vegetables, are, in fact, advances in 

 artificial classification, only in as far as they are advances in natural 

 classification, and in physiology. 

 To these subjects we now proceed. 



* Trapp's Transl. of Stower's Life of Linn<xus, p. 314. 



