PROGRESS TOWARDS A NATURAL SYSTEM. 



The reception of the system of Jussicu in this country was n.n s< 

 ready and cordial as that of LinnaBiis. As we have already noticed, 

 the two systems were looked upon as rivals. Thus Eoscoe, in 1S10, 14 

 endeavored to show that Jussieu's system was not more natural than 

 the Linnjean, and was inferior as an artificial system : but lie argues 

 his points as if Jussieu's characters were the grounds of his distribu- 

 tion ; which, as we have said, is to mistake the construction of a natu- 

 ral system. In 1803, Salisbury 14 had already assailed the machinery 

 of the system, maintaining that there are no cases of perigynous sta- 

 mens, as Jussieu assumes ; but this he urges with great expressions of 

 respect for the author of the method. And the more profound bota- 

 nists of England soon showed that they could appreciate and extend 

 the natural method. Robert Brown, who had accompanied Captain 

 Flinders to New Holland in 1801, and who, after examining that 

 country, brought home, in 1805, nearly four thousand species of 

 plants, was the most distinguished example of this. In his preface to 

 the Prodromus Florae Novce Hollandice, he says, that he found him- 

 self under the necessity of employing the natural method, as the only 

 way of avoiding serious error, when he had to deal with so many new 

 genera as occur in New Holland ; and that he has, therefore, followed 

 the method of Jussieu ; the greater part of whose orders are truly 

 natural, " although their arrangement in classes, as is," he says, " con- 

 ceded by their author, no less candid than learned, is often artificial, 

 and, as appears to me, rests on doubtful grounds." 



From what has already been said, the reader will, I trust, see what 

 an extensive and exact knowledge of the vegetable world, and what 

 comprehensive views of affinity, must be requisite in a person who has 

 to modify the natural system so as to make it suited to receive and 

 arrange a great number of new plants, extremely different from the 

 genera on which the arrangement was first formed, as the New Hol- 

 land genera for the most part were. He will also see how impossible 

 it must be to convey by extract or description any notion of the na- 

 ture of these modifications : it is enough to say, that they have excited 

 the applause of botanists wherever the science is studied, and that 

 they have induced M. de Humboldt and his fellow-laborers, themselves 

 botanists of the first rank, to dedicate one of their works to him in 

 terms of the strongest admiration. 15 Mr. Brown has also published 



J3 Linn. Tr. vol. xi. p. 50. " Ibid. vol. viii. 



15 Roberto Crown, Critanniarum gloriffi atque ornamento, totam Botanice? 



icienti;i n iir_r :n'o mirifico nouiplectenti. 



