DIFFICULTIES IN THE LINNiEAN SYSTEM. 307 



Tournefort founded his Orders on the fruit ; and his 

 countryman Adanson is charmed with the propriety of 

 this measure, because the fruit comes after the flower, 

 and thus precedence is given to the nobler part which 

 distinguishes the primary divisions or Classes! But 

 happily the laws, of a drawing-room do not extend to 

 philosophy, and we are allowed to prefer parts which 

 Ave are sure to meet with at one and the same moment, 

 without waiting a month or two, after we have made 

 out the Class of a plant, before we can settle its Order. 



The Linnasan System, however, like all human in- 

 ventions, has its imperfections and difficulties. If we 

 meet in gardens with double or monstrous flowers, 

 whose essential organs of fructification are deformed, 

 multiplied, or changed to petals; or if we find a soli- 

 tary barren or fertile blossom only ; we must be at a 

 loss, and in such cases could only guess at a new plant 

 from its natural resemblance to some known one. But 

 the principal imperfection of the System in question 

 consists, not merely in what arises from variations in 

 number or structure among the parts of a flower, 

 against which no system could provide, but in the dif- 



spermia, but as I could no where find it described in that Order, I 

 concluded it to be unpublished ; and was not a little surprised to be 

 told some time afterwards, that it was extant in the works of my 

 friends Retzius and Willdenow, under Didynamia Angiospenniuj by the 

 name of Holmskioldia, after a meritorious botanist. This last namtf 

 therefore, however unutterable, must remain ; and I wish the Lin- 

 nffian system, as well as myself, might be as free from blame in all 

 other cases as in this. 



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