312 DIFFICULTIES IN THK 



Tournefort founded his Orders on the fruit ; and his 

 countrynian Andanson is charmed with the propriety of 

 this measure, because the fruit comes after the flower, 

 and thus precedence is given to the nobler part which 

 distinguishes the primary divisions or Classes ! But 

 happily the laws of a drawing-room do not extend to 

 philosophy, and we are allowed to prefer parts which 

 we are sure to meet with at one and the same moment, 

 without waiting a month or two, after we have made out 

 the Class of a plant, before we can settle its Order. 



The Linnasan System, however, like all human inven- 

 tions, has its imperfections and difficulties. If we meet 

 in gardens with double or monstrous flowers, whose es- 

 sential organs of fructification are deformed, multiplied, 

 or changed to petals ; or if we find a solitary barren or 

 fertile blossom only ; we must be at a loss, and in such 

 cases could only guess at a new plant from its natural 

 resemblance to some known one. But the principal 

 imperfection of the System in question consists, not 

 merely in what arises from variations in number or 

 structure among the parts of a flower, against which no 

 system could provide, but in the differences which some- 

 times occur between the number of Stamens, Styles, 

 Sec, in different plants of the same natural genus. Thus, 

 some species of Cerasthim have only 4, others 5, Sta- 

 mens, though the greater part have 10. Lychnis dioica 



Didynamia Angiosfiermia^ by the name of Holmskioldia^ after a 

 meritorious botanist. This last name therefore, however unut- 

 terable, must remain ; and I wish the Linnaean system, as well 

 as myself, might be as free from blame in all other cases as in 

 this. 



