CLASSIFICATION. 



Main pat or Maui pat. — In southern Sarguja, extending to 



Udaipur. 



CLASSIFICATION. 



It is not possible to enter into much detail with regard 

 to the reasons for the system of classification adopted. The 

 two chief systems in use at the present day are those of 

 Bentham and Hooker adopted in the Genera Plantarnm, 

 and the German system of Endlicher adopted more or less 

 closely by Engler in die Naturlichen Pflanzenfamilien. 1 by 

 Strasburger, Warming, and other European botanists. , It is 

 now generally recognized that the apetalous class as consti- 

 tuted in the first classification is unnatural as, of course, is 

 the position assigned to the Gymnosperms in that classifica- 

 tion. 2 On the other hand recent researches, especially in 

 Fossil Botany, appear to show that the supposed phylogenetic 

 arrangement (as far as a linear system can be phylogenetic) 

 of the German system is probably still far from being a 

 correct one. As there is for the moment no work yet 

 complete 3 which err bodies the most recent views on 

 phylogeny, it has been rather difficult to decide on the 

 correct line to adopt. Engler, believing that the apparent 

 simplicity of the flowers of such families as the Willows 

 and Peppers to be primitive, comparing them with those 

 of the ConifeieB, which he believed to be somewhere ' near 

 the main line of descent of the Angiosperms, commences the 

 linear arrangement of the Dicotyledons with those orders 

 (after having previously disposed of the CasuarinaceaB on 

 -the ground of its numerous embryo sacs 4 ). But it is 

 now more than ever doubtful whether the simplicity of the 



1 Die Naturlichen Pflanzenfamilien, Nachtrage, p. 341 et seq. 

 8 Vide Genera Plantarnm, Vol. Ill, Pt. I, p. vii, and Introduction to 

 The Students' Flora of the British Islands, p. xi. 



3 Dr. Rendle's classification of Flowering Plants is not complete, Or 

 this might have been adopted in its entirety. 



< A character which has since been shown not to possess the signif canoe 

 attached to it. 



43 



