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XXV. On Melianthese, a new Natural Order, proposed and defined by 

 J. E. Planchon, Docteur-^s-Sciences. Communicated by the Secretary. 



Read March 7th, 1848. 



X HE task of naturalists, in tracing out the affinities of beings, is not unlike 

 that of putting together the many and various parts into which a picture has 

 been purposely cut. If of these parts a great number are wanting, the dif- 

 ficulty of arranging the existing ones will be increased ; groups will form 

 themselves either isolated, or connected only by narrow links ; and perhaps 

 some parts, finding no immediate neighbour, will be forced into unnatural 

 connexions. But in proportion as the missing pieces are collected, gaps will 

 successively be filled and projecting angles find their corresponding sinuses ; 

 until at last, by the connexion of all its parts, the picture will assume its 

 perfect integrity. Such would be the progress and such the end of systema- 

 tical natural science, if, according to an ingenious suggestion of Linnaeus 

 with respect to plants, the juxtaposition of countries on a geographical map 

 were a faithful pattern for the representation of the affinities which connect in 

 one harmonious whole the innumerable objects of nature. Now, although 

 such a disposition of natural tribes is but a degree of improvement over the 

 imperfect linear series ; although the outline of no group can be traced with 

 mathematical precision ; still every real advance in knowledge, every new 

 object which is carefully compared with the mass of others, serves ultimately 

 either to fill up intervening chasms, or to give a new direction to the outline 

 of some group ; or perhaps becomes itself the central nucleus around which 

 parts, until then floating without determinate station, will gather themselves 

 into one homogeneous mass. That such is the usual march of natural me- 

 thods I need not to say in a place where the memory of Linnaeus, although 

 justly connected with the most ingenious of systems, is no less so with the 

 happy and correct delineation of the groups which animate the vast picture 



