SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. 53 



marked with the Greek letters, numbers being re- 

 served for Genera and Species. 



It would be well for every person who undertakes 

 to write a systematic work on Botany to consider 

 these leading principles of Linnaeus, and to study 

 with care those more particular ones, laid down in his 

 Fundamenta Botanica, as well as in his Philosophia 

 and Critica. If his rules be faulty or unnecessary, 

 they should be expunged; but no good writer will 

 transgress them through ignorance or neglect. 



His principles for the distinction of Species should 

 be studied and contemplated over and over again, 

 by every person ambitious of permanent botanical 

 fame, beyond the reach of the fashions of System. 

 This department of Botany Linnaeus justly terms 

 artis robur, the strength, or sinews of the science. 

 Species are perhaps the only distinctions which are 

 indubitably natural; and to stamp them clearly, as 

 well as concisely, is the most important, perhaps the 

 most difficult, office of the philosophical botanist. 

 No one yet has equalled Linnaeus; nor has any one 

 swerved from his rules, in theory or in practice, but 

 for the worse. No intended improvement in this 

 department has come under my inspection, that does 

 not appear to me worse than indifferent. I speak 

 with the greatest respect and deference for the au- 

 thors of such projects, which it would be invidious 

 to particularize, and which have, doubtless, been well 

 intended. The more common faults in these com- 

 positions arise from negligence or inability, from a 



