HOW TO FACILITATE THE STUDY OF BOTANY. 215 



The founder of the Natural arrangement of plants was a French- 

 man, A. de Jussieu, and so clear and excellent was his system that 

 the alterations made by De Candolle, Endlicher, Liudley, Bentham 

 and Hooker, Baillon, &c, are merely a consequence of the enormously 

 increased number of species now known to science as compared with 

 Jussieu 1 ' s period of life, or they are attempts at sub-division into 

 more comprehensive groups, of which several, for instance that 

 proposed by the great botanist, Professor Lindley, have proved too 

 artificial, or to be founded on such minute details that they are 

 unserviceable for practical purposes. The system now generally 

 accepted, at least in the British possessions, is that laid down in 

 Bentham and Hooker's Genera Rusitorum, but even yet at this 

 period of advanced science, plants still exist which cannot easily 

 be referred to any of the Natural Orders, without being sufficiently 

 characteristic to justify the establishment of a new separate order, 

 and it is probable that owing to the origin of the different forms 

 of plants, by gradual alterations, as indicated by Darwin, there 

 will always be found intermediate links and doubtful forms that will 

 baffle any attempt at a complete classification. Even in such a 

 large and well-defined, class as Dicotyledons (two-seed-leaved), we 

 find exceptions in the peculiar features, as the one-seed-leaved 

 Cylamen, and in Cuscuta, without any seed-leaves at all. 



All these attempts at facilitating the study of Botany are very 

 useful for anybody acquainted with a preliminary knowledge of 

 Botany, but do not give any assistance to the layman who intends 

 pursuing the study, but to his or her disgust finds that before 

 finding out the name of a plant or the order to which it belongs, he 

 must work through a number of more or less unintelligible terms, 

 which are too often a stumbling-block for the would-be student of 

 Botany. My experience has also taught me that the study of 

 Botany is far more popular in the northern countries of the 

 Continent than in the far-stretching British possessions, and I can- 

 not help thinking that this fact must be chiefly attributed to the 

 difference in the botanical terminology. While the terms used 

 in English works on Botany are too frequently quite unintelligible 

 for the layman, because they are in most cases Anglicised Latin 

 words, the terms used by German and Danish authors are generally 

 easily comprehended, because they are translated into the mother- 

 language, refer to objects of daily life, or are derived from the 

 language itself. Though I am not an Englishman, I think I 



