Bcniham and Hooker's Genera Plantar uni 53 



are united to the two authors, that they analyse for their work 

 minions of specimens. In consulting their work, one can start 

 from the basis that they have verified the characters, except in the 

 rare cases, where they tell us that they have been unable to do so. 

 This is a capital point. Since Jussieu, no "Genera" has been drawn 

 up so completely after nature. 



Hence some slowness is the necessary result. The publication of 

 the first volume of the two writers has required five years, as much 

 as the entire work of Endlicher. Another consequence has been 

 to drive off to the end, after a complete review of the families, the 

 consideration of the great divisions and great classes. For the 

 present, our authors limit themselves to indicating a first category 

 of Dicotyledons, the Polypetala, which are subdivided into Thalami- 

 florse, Disciflor^e, and Calyciflorae. These latter comprehend co- 

 horts and families assuredly more evident than the new group of 

 Disciflorse. One does not yet see what will be done with the 

 Gymnosperms, nor how certain families of Monochlamydese, per- 

 haps Apetala, which touch on several Polypetala, will be finally 

 arranged. For the rest, Messrs Bentham and Hooker have adopted 

 in the series of families, the order of the Prodromus, without doubt, 

 not that they regard it as perfect — there is no perfect linear 

 order, nor can any linear order be perfect — but because it is a 

 well-known and convenient order. It is that of a quantity of floras 

 and many herbaria. It is also a logical order, under the point of 

 view that it makes the enumeration commence by families which 

 are easy of comprehension, in which no difficult question of organ- 

 ography comes to stop us. Thus in the Ranunculaceae all the 

 organs of the flower repose upon one extremity of the axis, and 

 shew their intimate analogy with the leaf The ovaries are superior. 

 Their soldering present steps which facilitate the understanding of 

 the phenomenon. The ovules take their rise clearly from the side 

 of each carpellary leaf (Delphinium.) To place the Ranunculaceaa 

 at the head of the vegetable kingdom, certainly does not respond 

 to the idea of selecting a perfect form in the sense of very compli- 

 cated ; but it does respond to the need our minds require of 

 proceeding from the known to the unknown. Many other arrange- 

 ments in the series of the Prodromus are less easy to justify ; only 

 it must be admitted, that the other dispositions proposed by 

 Lindley, Endlicher, Brongniart, Agardh the son, &c., are also open 

 to objections ; and it is an established rule, that in cases of doubt 

 we should give the preference to the most considerable work, to 



