HISTORICAL REYIEW OF THE PH.EOPHTCE^ 269 



lished by Esper (1800) ^. The latter has no special arrangement, 

 but Gmelin distmguished 7 subgenera (ordo) or 7 orders, as well as 

 TJlva and Trefnell a -forms. 



The issue of the latter may be said to have stimulated Dawson 

 TuR^s^ER in this country to prepare the 4 great quarto volumes of 

 coloured figures -, which mark the culmination of the epoch of collec- 

 tors and naturahsts pure and simple. All the forms are called 

 Fucus, the figures were chiefly drawn by Hooker, and there is 

 no attempt at any arrangement ; but the text is a. monument of 

 general information, and still indispensable to British naturalists, as 

 also for the figures of many foreign species collected by Banks, 

 Mexzies, and Robert Brow^n, from Austraha, the Cape, and Cali- 

 fornia, which are often the most readily available figures and descrip- 

 tions of still little-known plants. 



Reference to the older literature shows how much had been done 

 under the influence of the Linnsean Sj^stem between 178o and 1819 ; 

 scientific method had been introduced into the subject, and natura- 

 lists and collectors were stimulated for the first time to increasingly 

 careful and detailed observations. But though attention was paid to 

 such details of spore-arrangement as could be seen with a simple 

 lens of low power, little further advance was possible until better 

 microscopic methods had been invented. The fine hand-colom-ed 

 plates of Dawson Turner and Hooker set a standard for future work 

 of this kind ; but the general attitude of the botanist of the period is 

 perhaps summed up by Martyn (1807), — " Many of them {Ficctis sp.) 

 make very beautiful specimens for the herbarium, and are often seen 

 disposed on paper so as to form a sort of picture " ^\ 



IV. Influence of the Natural System (1789-1851). 



Contemporaneous with the work of Turner, new ideas were 

 making their way as a consequence of the increasing acceptance of 

 the Natural System of Classification of Flowering Plants, published 

 by A. L. de Jussieu (Paris, 1789), which was to finally supersede the 

 Linnsean System. Plants being successfully grouped for the first 

 time in Subdivisions and ' Natural Orders ' which attempted to map 

 out the more fundamental ' natural affinities ' of the plants in ques- 

 tion. The application of these ideas to sea-weeds was indicated by 

 Lamouroux (1813), who in a striking essaj^ ^ marked out a new 

 scheme, which not only segregated numerous genera, but arranged 

 them in distinct Natural Orders. The fiii'st feature of primary 

 importance was the separation of the Floridese (II.) from the 

 Fucaceae (I.) and the Dictyotacese (III.) ; while such admirable 

 names as JLaminaria^ Desmarestia, Chorda, Dictyota, Padina, 

 Asperococcus were proposed for the new genera. As minor imper- 

 fections of this first attempt, it may be noted that the Floridean 



^ Icones Fiicorum, Espsr, Niimberg- (1797), 2 vols., text & plates. 



- Fuci, Dawson Turner (London, 1808-1809, 1811, 1819), 4 vols. : coloured 

 plates and descriptions of 2.58 species of Fucus, both British and foreign. 



^ Martyn (1807) in Miller's Gardener s Dictionary. 



■* Lamouroux (Paris, 1813), " Essai sur les Genres dela famille des Thalassio- 

 phytes non articulees." 



