62 ' HISTORICAL EULOGIUM 



2000, into a hundred families. He founds each of these 

 primitive families on a fixed similarity of characters, and 

 shows that this concurrence of characters is indispensable; 

 for each character, taken separately, may appertain to several 

 families ; it is their assemblage, and an assemblage differing 

 in each, and which is peculiar to that family alone, which 

 constitutes its distinctive traits. 



The character of each family is thus not unique nor arbi- 

 traiy, as in artificial systems ; it is owe, but manifold^ and 

 consists in the assemblage of characters pointed out by obser- 

 vation and fact, as being the most unvarying in each family. 



It is easy to perceive that such a new light could not pos- 

 sibly be cast on all these families, these principal groups of tlie 

 vegetable kingdom, unless the author scanned the whole of 

 its elements, — the species and genera, and the characters of 

 every genus. Throughout this formidable undertaking, his 

 attention never slackened, the experienced eye of the Natu- 

 ralist everywhere admires such consummate investigation, 

 happy tact, and profound sagacity, as till then had never 

 perhaps been equalled, in any branch of science. Long ago, 

 as I had remarked, certain families of plants were recognised, 

 by all botanists, as h^m^natural. In 1672, Morison pointed 

 out the leading features of that of the Umbelliferce. Some 

 years later, Ray attempted a distribution of the whole vege- 

 table kingdom on a vaster scale; he brought forward into 

 notice the grand divisions of all plants mlo Dicotyledones and 

 Monocotyledones, and already ranked the Palms among the 

 latter. Finally, in 1689, precisely a century before M. de 

 Jussieu, Magnol published his work on the Families of Plants. 

 But neither Magnol, Morison, nor Ray were able to follow 

 these general views into detail ; and their scattered ideas and 

 happy traits were only lost. Towards the middle of the 

 18th century, that very Linnaeus to whom Botany already 

 owed its nomenclature, its descriptive language, and the most 

 concise artificial system it had ever received, published a 

 suite of Orders, or Natural Families, which he first raised to 

 the number of sixty-four, and reduced at a subsequent period 



