TUKlR CHARACTER^. SSI 



clearness of his conceptions, and rank him as the father 

 of this branch of botany. 



Linnaeus first insisted on generic characters being- 

 exclusively taken from the 7 parts of fructification, and 

 he demonstrated these to be sufficient, for all the plants 

 tliat can be discovered. He also laid it down as a max- 

 im, that all genera are as much founded in nature as the 

 species which compose them ; and hence follows one of 

 the most just and valuable of all his principles, that a ge- 

 nus should furnish a character^ not a character form & 

 genus ; or, in other words, that a certain coincidence of 

 structure, habit, and perhaps qualitieSj among a number 

 of plants, should strike the judgment of a botanist, before 

 he fixes on one or more technical characters, by which 

 to stamp and define such plants as one natural genus, 

 "JThus the Hemerocallis ccerulea, Andr. Repos. t. 6, and 

 albay t. 194, though hitherto referred by all botanists to 

 that genus, are so very different from the other species 

 in habit, that a discriminative character might with con- 

 fidence be expected in some part or other of their fructi- 

 fication, and sucli a character is accordingly found in 

 the winged seeds. Yet in the natural genera of Arena- 

 ria and Spergula, winged or bordered seeds are so far 

 from indicating a distinct genus, that it is doubtful 

 whether they are sufficient to constitute even a specific 

 character. Sec Engl. Bot. t. 958, 1535 and 1536. So 

 Blandfordia^ Exot. Bot. t. 4, is well distinguished from 

 Aletris, with which some botanists have confounded it, 

 by its hairy seeds ; but the same circumstance will not; 

 justify us in separating a few species from Convolvulm^ 



MM 



