THE KATCRAL SYSTKM OF CLASSIFICATION. 367 



far as comprehended, may be to a good degree expressed in our 

 classification. This idea of plan and system in nature supposes a 

 Planner, or a mind which has ordered things so, Avith intelligence and 

 purpose •, and it is this plan, or its evidences and results, which the 

 naturalist is endeavoring to investigate. The botanist, accordingly, 

 does not undertake to contrive a system, but he strives to exj^ress in 

 a classification, as well as he can, the System of Nature, or, in other 

 words, the Plan of the Creator in the Vegetable Kingdom. 



719. " So there can be only one natural system of botany, if by 

 the term we mean the plan according to which the vegetable crea- 

 tion was called into being, Avith all its grades and diversities among 

 the species, as well of past as of the present time. But there may 

 be many natural systems, if we mean the attempts of men to inter- 

 pret and express the plan of the vegetable creation, — systems 

 which will vary with our advancing knowledge, and with the judg- 

 ment and skill of different botanists, — and which must all be very 

 imperfect. They will all bear the impress of individual minds, and 

 be shaped by the current philosophy of the age. But the endeavor 

 always is to make the classification a reflection of Nature, as far as 

 any system can be which has to express such a vast and ever in- 

 creasing array of facts, and most various and intricate relations, in 

 a series of definite propositions, and have its divisions and subdi- 

 visions following each other in some fixed order." Our so-called 

 natural methods must always fail to give more than an imperfect 

 and considerably distorted reflection, not merely of the plan of the 

 vegetable kingdom, but even of our knowledge of it ; and every 

 form of it yet devised, or likely to be, is more or less artificial, in 

 some of its parts or details. This is inevitable, because, — 



720. (1st.) Tlie relationships of any group cannot always be right- 

 ly estimated before all its members are known, and their whole 

 structure understood ; so that the views of botanists are liable to be 

 modified with the discoveries of every year. The discovery of a 

 single plant, or of a point of structure before misunderstood, has 

 sometimes changed materially the position of a considerable group 

 in the system, and minor alterations are continually made by our in- 

 creasing knowledge. (2d.) The groups which we recognize, and dis- 

 tinguish as genera, tribes, orders, &c., are not always, and perhaps 

 not generally, completely circumscribed in nature, as we are obliged 

 to assume them to be in our classification. This might be expected 

 from the nature of the case. For the naturalist's groups, of what- 



