LINX.^AN ARTIFICIAL METHOD. 273 



completely discovered, and that if discovered it would 

 probably be too difficult for common use, contrived an 

 artificial system, by which plants might conveniently 

 be arranged, like words in a dictionary, so as to be 

 most readily found. If all the w^ords of a language 

 could be disposed according to their abstract deriva- 

 tions, or grammatical affinities, such a performance 

 might be very instructive to a philosopher, but would 

 prove of little service to a young scholar ; nor has it 

 ever been mentioned as any objection to the use of a 

 dictionary, that words of very different meanings, if 

 formed of nearly the same letters, often stand toge- 

 ther. The ^lethod of Linnaeus therefore is just such 

 a dictionary in Botany, while his Philosophia Botanica 

 is the grammar, and his other works contain the 

 history, and even the poetry, of the science. 



But before we 2;ive a detail of his artificial svstem, 

 we m^ust first see how this great man fixed the funda- 

 mental principles of botanical science. Nor are these 

 principles confined to botany, though they originated 

 in that study. The Linna3an style of discriminating 

 plants, has been extended by himself and others to 

 animals and even fossils ; and his admirable principles " 

 of nomenclature are applied with great advantage even 

 to chemistry itself, now become so vast and accurate 

 a science. 



Independently of all general methods of classifica- 

 tion, whether natural or artificial, plants, as well as 



T 



