INTRODUCTION. xxiii 



But as human intelligence advanced, and a knowledge of things increased, 

 such rude distinctions were improved, and when no means existed of appre- 

 ciating the value of minute or hidden organs, the functions and existence 

 of which were unknown, objects were at first collected into groups, charac- 

 terised by common, external, and obvious signs. Theophrastus had his 

 water-plants and parasites, pot-herbs and forest trees, and corn-plants ; 

 Dioscorides had aromatics, and gum-bearing plants, eatable vegetables and 

 corn-herbs ; and the successors, imitators, and copiers of those writers, 

 retained the same kind of arrangement for ages. It was not till 1570 that 

 Lobel, a Fleming, improved the ancient modes of distinction, by taking into 

 account characters of a more definite nature than those which had been 

 employed by his predecessors ; but he was soon succeeded by others, among 

 the moat distinguished of whom were Csesalpinus, an Italian who wrote in 

 1583, the celebrated Tournefort, and especially our countryman, John Ray, 

 who flourished in the end of the seventeenth century. The latter added 

 much to the knowledge of his predecessors, and had so clear and philoso- 

 phical a conception of the true principles of classification, as to have left 

 behind him in his Historia Plantarum the real foundation of all those 

 modern views which, having been again brought forward at a more favour- 

 able time by Jussieu, are generally ascribed exclusively to that most learned 

 Botanist and his successors. Ray, however, labom-ed under the great dis- 

 advantage of being too far in advance of his contemporaries, who were 

 unable to appreciate the importance of his views or the justness of his 

 opinions ; and who therefore, instead of occupying themselves wdth the 

 improvement of his system, set themselves to work to discover some artificial 

 method of arrangement, that should be to Botany what the alphabet is 

 to language, a key by which the details of the science may be readily 

 ascertained. With this in view, Rivinus invented, in 1690, a system 

 depending upon the formation of the corolla ; Kamel, in 1693, upon the 

 fruit alone ; Magnol, in 1720, on the calyx and corolla ; and finally, 

 Linnseus, in 1731, on variations in the stamens and pistil. The method of 

 the last author has enjoyed a degree of celebrity which has rarely fallen to 

 the lot of human contrivances, chiefly on account of its clearness and sim- 

 plicity ; and in its day it effected a large amount of good. 



It was soon, however, perceived by those who studied the Vegetable 

 Kingdom profoundly, that no improvement could be made in the knowledge 

 of its true nature, of the best manner of arranging it, or even of the pur- 

 poses to which it might be applied, unless the philosophy of the subject was 

 investigated ; and this became daily more apparent as the materials col- 

 lected by botanical travellers accumulated. It was found that the few 

 thousand ill-examined plants which inhabit Europe gave a most imperfect 

 idea of the vegetation of the globe ; that methods of classification which 

 were tolerable so long as species were few, became useless, or an incum- 

 brance as the number increased, and that no real progress in Botany, as a 

 branch of science, could be hoped for so long as a few arbitrary signs were 

 taken as the basis of all arrangement. The older Botanists knew little of 

 vegetable physiology ; and of the laws of vegetable structure they had at the 

 most but a glimmering perception. Yet those subjects are the founda- 

 tion of all sound principles of classification. The recognition of that fact 

 immediately led to the investigation of new branches of knowledge, in 

 which discoveries were daily made, and it has terminated in a universal 

 adoption of the principles of Ray, improved and extended by the admirable 

 views of Jussieu, as developed in his Genera Plantarum secundum Ordines 



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