308 CLASSIFICATION AND DESCRIPTION 
press the resemblances and differences among plants as we 
find them in nature. 
On the whole, as we have said, these artificial systems 
served to advance botanical knowledge; although after a 
while the increasing number of them became a serious burden 
to all who studied plants. Any system, it was thought, if 
only used by all, would be much better than having to use 
so many. 
At last a practical way out of the increasing confusion was 
found by the clear-sighted Linnzeus who came to the rescue 
much as he had done in the matter of plant names. 
85. The Linnzan system. The great need for some system 
which would be used by botanists in general, could, of course, 
be met only by a classification that was more convenient 
than any of those already proposed. Linnzeus was the first 
to see clearly that the necessary convenience could not be 
expected in his day from any attempt at a natural arrange- 
ment, for the plants to be arranged were as yet very im- 
perfectly known. His predecessors had tried to produce a 
natural classification on an artificial basis, with results that 
were neither natural nor convenient. He aimed first of all 
at convenience, and to this end adopted a frankly artificial 
basis; yet in spite of this, as we shall see, his system proved 
to be more natural in many ways than any previously pro-- 
posed. 
In the Linnean system, the old division into herbs and 
trees was entirely abandoned; all plants were divided into 
twenty-four ‘classes,’ according to the presence, number, 
or form of certain essential parts (pistils) of the flower; and 
these classes were so grouped that all flowering plants were 
separated from those which have no true flowers. The 
latter constituted Class 24, Cryptogamia‘ or cryptogams, 
which includes all plants such as seaweeds, mushrooms, 
mosses, and ferns, that are either destitute of parts such as 
we find in flowers, or if anything corresponding to such parts 
are present they are hidden from our unaided sight. The 
other twenty-three classes include all plants in which floral 
parts essential to the formation of seed, are manifest,—such 
1 Cryp-to-ga’-mia < Gr. kyryptos, hidden. 
