On Nomenclature. 423 



they agree in one peculiarity of seed-vessel; but with an 

 exception, dependent on the relative position of stamina and 

 petals. 



Linnaeus, who died at the age of seventy-one, did not live 

 long enough to complete an arrangement which should em- 

 brace all possible divisions or affinities; but he directed the 

 attention of his pupils to this object. He laboured to effect 

 it; but life was too short for such extent of investigation and 

 description. He gave a scheme of easy reference, which is 

 not opposed to that of Jussieu or De Candolle, but rather an 

 easy and pleasing preface or index to their more extended 

 enquiries. Linnaeus, primarily looking to the first natal ap- 

 pearance of plants, divides them according to their manifest- 

 ation, or non-manifestation, of cotyledons. Some are mono- 

 cotyledonous, &c. This division is the second of De Candolle's, 

 who founds his first division upon an anatomical and micro- 

 scopical distinction, which merely points out a peculiarity in 

 the acotyledonous plants, not found in the other two primary 

 divisions. Microscopic investigators may discover cellulae to 

 be only peculiar forms of vascula, and prove that no differ- 

 ence can be shown which can warrant a definition of one 

 which will not apply to the other. 



Linnaeus having divided vegetables into three tribes from 

 these primary differential characters, proposes a rather fanciful 

 division of his tribes into races, according to their importance 

 to the well-being of the animated world. He places the Mono- 

 cotyledons foremost; instancing, 1. the Palms, as princes 

 among plants, as dignified in loftiness, and beauty, and use- 

 fulness, chiefly to man, in every portion of their structure 

 and composition ; 2. the Gramina, yielding food not only to 

 man, but to beasts of the field, birds of the air, insects, &c, 

 to all, either directly or indirectly, as supplying food to the 

 graminivorous, which yield food to the carnivorous (these 

 he calls plebeians) ; 3. the Lilia, whom he calls patricians, or 

 gentry, as being dignified in beauty, often salutary, but not 

 equally subservient to ordinary uses. He divides his Dico- 

 tyledons in like manner: 1. Proceres, chieftain forest and 

 fruit trees ; 2. Militaries, thorn-bearers, &c. ; 3. Nobiles, 

 gentry, almost all flowers. 



He left, however, an outline of natural arrangement, which 

 was published, after his death, by his son. His plan he is 

 said to have communicated to De Jussieu, who greatly en- 

 larged and improved it, as De Candolle has done since. But 

 the system of arrangement by seed-vessels groups together 

 plants which differ in almost every other respect, at least as 

 arbitrarily or artificially as the system which arranges them 



