CHAPTER OF CRITICISM. 



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be long enough to pierce through not only the " six tough bull-hides " of Mr. 

 Lankester's shield, but also the "solid brass" (I mean no sarcasm) of the 

 learned professor's. In fact I should of necessity have to make extracts from 

 Dr. Lindley's botanical works, and comment on the unnecessary severity of 

 language he has employed towards the Linnsean system and its advocates on 

 various occasions, infusing what I consider to be the same unjust, and, I still 

 think, unphilosophical spirit into his pupils. Inquiry into the merits of the 

 Linnsean system is not once thought of by the modern botanist of a certain 

 school, who is taught to despise it as worse than useless. Thus Mr. Lankester, 

 in giving a notice of the works published in the present day for the botanical 

 student — in which, surely, impartiality required that Linnsean publications, 

 written, as he himself says, " in a pleasing style, calculated to allure to the study 

 of Botany," should not be placed below zero — huddles a few of them together in 

 a sort of postscript, and goes out of his way to intimate that the system of 

 Linn^us must be discarded, as "prejudicial to the advancement of the science 

 of Botany." in his more recent paper in The Naturalist (p. 175), Mr. Lan- 

 kester still labours to show that the Linnsean system is " exploded," and that 

 u its advocates belong to a school whose views are very far behind the advance 

 made by the science of Botany." This style of astounding assertion is only 

 exceeded by the great master himself, who, in his Synopsis of the British Flora, 

 says : — " It Qhe Linnsean system] is repudiated every where by the rising gene- 

 ation ;" that is, I presume, if they learn Botany at the London University ; he 

 adds that it " ought to be excluded from all courses of public instruction by every 

 governing body in this country." Then, after all, it does linger somewhere. 

 Surely it is not countenanced by the Regius Professor of Botany at Glasgow !* 

 But seriously, where is the evidence of the injury that the interests of Botany 

 have sustained from the promulgation of the Linnsean system ? Botany has an 

 army of votaries now, but Burnett tells us that in his younger days the 

 medical student was a laughing-stock to his compeers if he troubled himself 

 with Botany. From the moment that the herbarium of Linn^us touched this 

 country, it must be obvious to all acquainted with the subject, that the study 

 of Botany received an impulse which, by increasing its admirers on all sides, has 

 led to its present prosperity. Did Sir James Smith injure the interests of 

 Botany when he brought this valuable collection to England ? and has the use 

 he made of its stores, in the publication of his English Botany, and his hitherto 

 unequalled English Flora, been so injurious to the spread of the science? Are 

 we also meekly to admit as a fact, that Sir W. J. Hooker, in disseminating over 

 the country three editions of his British Flora, arranged on this " discarded" and 



* Sir Wm. Jackson Hooker, L.L.D., &c— Ed. 

 VOL. III. — NO. XXII. 3 R 



