76 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



ment and modification. " No species or genus," he tells us, " we 

 establish can be considered as absolute ; it will ever have to be 

 completed, corrected, or modified, as more and more individuals 

 come to be correctly observed." As we rise in the scale of taxo- 

 nomic groups the same principle is always applicable. And 

 this was really the view of Linnreus himself. Tiiose, in my 

 judgment, have done scant justice to his immortal memory who 

 find in his nrtificial system his chief claim to lame. AV^c see the 

 man in his real intellectual greatness in those " Eragmenta 

 Methodi Naturalis " which are included in his ' Classes Planta- 

 rum.' AVhat is more noble or more animated by the modern 

 spirit than the following confession of faith : — 



" Diu et Ego circa method um naturalem inveniendam laboravi, 

 bene multa qua> adderem obtinui, perficere nou potui, continua- 

 turus dum vixero"*. 



This is the problem which presses ou biologists with still 

 more urgent insistence today tlian it did ou Liumeus, — the per- 

 fection of the nutui'al method. Taxonomy has become, as it were, 

 the algebraic sum of all other branches of biological research. 

 Beutham saw that it took a new life when emaucipated froui the 

 idea of the fixity of species. It may be objected that, after all, 

 the natural method as regards great groujis does not find its 

 highest development in the ' Genera Plautarum.' Every writer 

 of a German textbook hazards uow-a-days a new classification 

 of the A'egetable Kingdom, while Beutham was content to adhere 

 pretty closely to the Caiulolleau sequence. But he saw that the 

 real difliculty was to begin Irom the bottom. Things had come 

 to siu'h a pass that the chaos in which Beutham found genera 

 reproduced that in which Linnajus found species. AVhen genera 

 have been got into something approaching discipline, it is a com- 

 paratively easy task to discuss the relations of orders. Beutham 

 lias himself given an illustration of the fuudameutal necessity of 

 ascertaining the accurate facts about genera before larger aggre- 

 gates can be accurately marked out. The genus Magallana was 

 allowed materially to invalidate the character of TropuoIecB till it 

 was discovered that it was founded upon the fruit of one natural 

 order carele.<sly attached to a llowering specimen of auolhei- f . 



This is uot the place to attempt any criticism of the ' Genera ' as 

 a whole. It is enough that the scientific world has received the 

 book with as unanimous an assent as was accorded to the ' Spe- 

 cies Plautarum ' of Linnaus. Never perhaps was a collaboratuin 

 of authors so ha])py J. Beutham brought to it, as Professor 

 Oliver has remarked, " an insight of so special a character, as to 

 deserve the name of genius, into the relative value of characters 



* ' Classes riantanini ' (1738), p. 484. 



I Address to Liiincau Society, 1871, p. 14. 



\ liontluiin Las given an aecouiit of the method of work and re.spcctive 

 share.-* of liiiiitielf and Sii- Joseiili Ilookoi- in the elaboration of the ' (icnera 

 Plantannn' in a paper in the Jonru. Linn. Soc. (Eotany) vol. xx. pp. 3U4-308, 



