PREFACE. VU 



be able to class each of the many plants whose exact place 

 is at present obscure and doubtful. It may then be possi- 

 ble that the Natural System may come recommended not 

 onlv as conformable with the order of Nature, but also as 

 offering facilities in its application equal to any other. 

 Until this be accomplished, we must, in order to facilitate 

 the progress of the student, avail ourselves of another sys- 

 tem — of that in which the principles of arrangement are 

 more obvious and easily apprehended. We have such a 

 system in that which bears the name of Linnaeus. In it, 

 the course of Nature has not been strictly regarded, and in 

 order to simplify. Families have been broken up, and allied 

 genera separated and scattered. 



We may indeed define the Natural System as that which, 

 taking a philosophic view, attempts an arrangement of the 

 members of the Vegetable Kingdom according to the order 

 observed in their creation, so far as can be detected by our 

 finite understandings : the artificial or Linnaean, as that 

 which merely classifies them in such a manner as may be 

 most easy for the Botanist to point out or discover the place 

 which each species may or ought to occupy in its arrange- 

 ment. The student of the Artificial System may be com- 

 pared to him, who is satisfied with what knowledge of a 

 district he can acquire by traversing the bye-ways and sur- 

 veying each portion of a country in detail : the student of the 

 Natural System, in addition to this, ascends an elevated 

 situation, in order that he may become acquainted with the 

 relative bearings, and enjoy the beauty of the landscape as 

 a whole. 



In order, therefore, to facilitate the progress of the young 

 Student, I shall give at the end of the Natural System, an 

 arrangement of the Genera, according to the Linnsean 

 Classification. By means of this, when he wishes to find 

 out the name and genus of a plant presented to him for the 

 first time, he can resort to the Artificial System of arrange- 



