the present state of Botanical Classification. 51 



elegant sketches of his Botanical Philosophy. Those pro- 

 perties are not often used in distinguishing genera, and are 

 comparatively neglected by many late writers; they will pro- 

 bably hereafter rise to importance, and it may be found useful 

 to refer to the older writers, who laid so much stress on folia- 

 tion. 



In giving the characters it is necessary to use a modified 

 language of a greater breadth of expression than usual. 



I have collected some materials for ascertaining the founders 

 of the different alliances in the table; and the first publisher 

 must be so considered, even were it thought to be the result 

 of an indistinct happy accident. P'ew writers can take the 

 range of a whole science and instinctively select from the mass 

 whatever is well founded. Writers may see the truth placed 

 before them, but seeing it mixed up with objectionable matter, 

 they may throw it aside, and after long inquiry and many 

 qualifications, may find on reference the final result of their 

 labburs to be the same. Science herein differs from literature, 

 that the truth must bring two writers to the same point; but 

 it is also true that we may let the result of our reading digest 

 with the mass of our ideas, until we mistake for the produce 

 of our own minds what we met with elsewhere. Frequently, 

 by a kind of compulsion, after long research the views of 

 others are adopted. The annexed table has thus been most 

 materially improved, and was in some parts new cast, from the 

 many new affinities and assemblages discovered by the acute- 

 ness of Bartling and Lindley. 



Of the 60 alliances in the table, (in the next page) it is highly 

 satisfactory to find that nearly 50 have been substantially in- 

 dicated by the first names which botany can produce : — 

 Agardh, Bartling, Brown, Caesalpinus, Decandolle, Hedwig, 

 A. L. de Jussieu, Ad. de Jussieu, Lindley, Linnaeus, Morison, 

 Ray, Reichenbach, Richard, Rudolphi, Schultes, St. Hilaire, 

 Wallenbergh. The particulars of their discoveries, and the 

 characters of the botanical formations and alliances which I 

 have prepared, would extend these remarks much too far. 



[See the " Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles " of the 

 present number for some remarks on the introductory passages 

 of the foregoing paper, prepared for insertion as a note, but 

 for which there is not room in this place. Edit.] 



M 2 



