50 TALKS AFIELD. 



order, and so on to the most highly developed 

 of plants, a natural system of classification 

 would present no difficulties. Such is not 

 the case, however. Taking almost any plant 

 as a starting point, we find not only a line 

 ascending and another descending from it, 

 but we find several lines developing in dif- 

 ferent directions ; and some of these lines 

 may be suddenly suppressed, or they may 

 become so modified as to present an equal 

 number of resemblances to each of several 

 starting points. To properly associate plants 

 in a lineal classification, as we necessarily 

 must attempt to do in our books, as if we 

 were enumerating a straightforward geneal- 

 ogy, is therefore an impossibility. Bernard 

 and Antoine Jussieu, uncle and nephew, 

 residents of Paris, were the immediate found- 

 ers of the natural system in outline, al- 

 though Linnaeus and others had indicated 

 such a system. It has been much improved 

 by subsequent botanists. A. P. De Can- 

 dolle early in this century rearranged the 

 natural families, or orders, into what is 

 known as the Candollean sequence. This 

 sequence supposes that the highest j^lants 

 are those in which all the parts of the flower 

 are present, and in which they all stand by 



