220 Dr Daubeiiy on the Writings and 



It was, no doubt, quite natural and consistent in the latter, 

 imagining, as he did, that the more complicated forms of TCge- 

 table life had proceeded out of the simpler ones, by a number 

 of successive tentative efforts of creative energy, to imagine 

 that he was following the order of nature in describing, in the 

 first place, those plants which he conceived to be of earliest 

 production : whilst Decandolle, who regarded the whole vege- 

 table kingdom as equally the result of the same wise and bene- 

 ficial plan, and who had been taught by the researches of 

 Cuvier, that the inhabitants of the early periods of the Avorld 

 were as complicated in their organisation, and as skilfully con- 

 trived for their respective uses, as those at present in exist- 

 ence, was led to prefer that mode of considering the subject, 

 which enabled him to place first before his readers the organs 

 of a plant, in their most complete state of development, and 

 therefore in their most intelligible point of view. 



He felt, that it was pursuing a mistaken analogy, to ima- 

 gine that the organs of reproduction or of vegetation could be 

 studied with more facility in a moss, than in a flower ; it might 

 be rather said, that in the former they were in a manner in 

 a rudimentary condition, and consequently that their true 

 uses could best be inferred by analogy, after we had fully exa- 

 mined them in plants of a more complicated structure ; just as 

 we should be at a loss to explain the uses of the eye, from exa- 

 mining it in the mole, or of the mammae from a dissection of 

 those in the male subject, instead of beginning with those cases 

 in which the above organs were in a state of the most complete 

 development. 



Decandolle accordingly commences his system with the fa- 

 mily Ranunculaceae, as that in which the natural symmetry 

 of plants belonging to the Dicotyledonous division is in the 

 least degree departed from, the sepals, petals, stamens, and 

 even the pistils, being here separate and distinct ; and he then 

 proceeds, step by step, to trace the different degrees and kinds 

 of irregularity which may be perceived in those other natural 

 families which he places before us in succession. 



Nor are the more technical, or, as it may be termed, the 

 mechanical arrangements adopted in this treatise, selected with 

 less judgment and discretion. 



