3*58 LINN^EAN ARTIFICIAL METHOD, 



stem, by which plants might conveniently be 

 arranged, like words in a dictionary, so as to 

 be most readily found. If all the words of a 

 language coula be disposed according to their 

 abstract derivations, or grammatical affinities, 

 such a performance mi^ht be very instructive 

 to a philosopher, but would prove of little 

 service to a young scholar ; nor has it ever 

 been mentioned as any objection to the use 

 of a dictionary, that words of very different 

 meanings, if formed of nearly the same letters, 

 often stand together. The Method of Lin- 

 naeus therefore is just such a dictionary in 

 Botany, while his Philosophia Botanica is 

 the grammar, and his other works contain 

 the history, and even the poetry, of the sci- 

 ence. 



But before we give a detail of his artificial 

 system, we must first see how this great man 

 fixed the fundamental principles of botanical 

 science. Nor are these principles confined to 

 botany, though they originated in that study. 

 The Linnaean style of discriminating plants, 

 has been extended by himself and others to 

 animals and even fossils ; and his admirable 

 principles of nomenclature are applied with 



