If Rev. Mr Ramsay's Biographical Notice of 



labours tend only to increase the confusion and perplexity. 

 Sir James considered, therefore, an adherence^ to those rules 

 and principles which had been found 'efficacious in the'study 

 of natural objects, should be preserved, except when there was 

 notorious and manifest advantages in departing from them, 

 for terms and arrangements cannot be made to which no pos- 

 sible objection can be urged. Botany is to be esteemed amongst 

 the less exact sciences, inasmuch as, that after the knowledge 

 of the individuals as they exist separately has been attain- 

 ed, something is left to opinion for their arrangement in clas- 

 ses, and notwithstanding all the pains that have been taken 

 with them, it must sometimes be difficult to say to which of 

 the adjoining classes the individuals on the confines of each 

 ought to belong ; and hence I think we may adopt a rule upon 

 this subject laid down by Malthus in regard to political eco- 

 nomy, — a science which we may remark, by the way, exempli- 

 fies in a very great degree the evils of departing from the 

 rules, and definitions, and use of terms and arrangements used 

 by those who were the principal founders of it ; and it is 

 hardly to be questioned that such differences, introduced by 

 authors subsequent to Adam Smith, have been the cause of 

 much prejudice against the science, from the idea of its vague- 

 ness, its fluctuating and uncertain character. Mr M.'s rule is 

 this, " That the alteration proposed should not only remove the 

 immediate objections which have been made, but should be 

 shovvn to be free from other equal, or greater objections ; and, 

 on the whole, be obviously more useful in facilitating the im- 

 provement of the science. A change, which is itself always an 

 evil, can only be warranted by superior utility, taken in its 

 most enlarged sense." * 



A most important consideration arises from this, with re- 

 gard to the President'^s supposed aversion to the new and more 

 enlarged view of the vegetable world, called the Natural System, 

 and his general preference to the Linnaean or artificial. The 

 answer to this objection is contained in his works, because in 

 his *' Grammar of Botany'' he has been at the greatest pains 



• Malthus, Def. Pol. Econ. p. 6. 



