NATURAL SYSTEM OF JUSSIEU. 309 



editors have seldom been aware of this; and Murray 

 especially, in his fourteenth edition of the book just 

 mentioned, has inserted new plants without any regard 

 to this original plan of the work. 



From the foregoing remarks it is easy to compre- 

 hend what is the real and highly important use of the 

 Genera Piantarum of Jussieu arranged in Natural 

 Orders, the most learned botanical work that has ap- 

 peared since the Species Piantarum of Linnaeus, and 

 the most useful to those who study the philosophy of 

 botanical arrangement. The aim of this excellent 

 author is to bring the genera of plants together, as 

 much as possible, according to their natural affinities; 

 constructing^ his Classes and Orders rather from an 

 enlarged and «;eneral view of those affinities, than from 

 technical characters, previously assumed, for each Class 

 or Order ; except great and primary divisions, derived 

 chiefly from the Cotyledons, the Petals, and the inser- 

 tion of the Stamens. But his characters are so far from 

 absolute, that at the end of almost every Order we find 

 a number of genera merely related to it, and not pro- 

 perly belonging to it ; and at the end of the system a 

 very large assemblage of genera incapable of being re- 

 ferred to any Order whatever. Nor could a learner 

 possibly use this system as a dictionai*y, so as to find 

 out any unknown plant. The characters of the Orders 

 are necessarily, in proportion* as those Orders are na- 

 tural, so widely and loosely constructed, that a student 

 has no where to *iv<. ; and in proportion as they are 



