426 



ceives the most clear and comprehensive idea of natural 

 orders, separately or combined ; who perceives best what 

 constitutes an order or a genus, and, above all, from what 

 particular principles, in each different order, generic di- 

 stinctions are best to be derived. But most of all I 

 should wish to attempt the demonstration of some of his 

 or Linnaeus's natural orders, for they are very often the 

 same, that you may be enabled to see in what their di- 

 stinctions consist, and to pursue the ideas of these great 

 men, for your own pleasure and instruction. The subject is 

 boundless, and perfection is unattainable. But we may 

 derive great assistance from considering nature under va- 

 rious points of view, and from applying to practical, use 

 what others have, with great pains and difficulty, been 

 able to establish. 



All systematic botanists, since the subject was first at- 

 tentively considered, have concurred in one sentiment, 

 that the parts of fructification, or, in other words, the 

 organs which compose the flower and fruit, are the only 

 ones which can, with any certainty, be resorted to for the 

 essential principles of arrangement. Linnaeus extends 

 this maxim to the generic characters of plants, in which 

 botanists of the French school do not concur. 



I cannot but esteem this one of their greatest errors, 

 which, as far as I can perceive, may always be avoided by 

 a competent exertion of the mental powers ; the parts of 

 fructification, well considered, being abundantly sufficient 

 in every case to characterize genera that are really and 

 naturally distinct. For those that are not so, of which 

 examples in books are but too frequent, I am ready to al- 

 low that no good distinctions are to be found. The first 

 great difference in plants universally considered as divi- 

 ding the vegetable kingdom into two most natural and 

 essentially distinct sections, is founded on the structure 

 of the seed, and its mode of germinating or sprouting. 

 If its form be simple, and the bud or embryo undivided, 

 the plants so circumstanced are said to be Monocotyle- 



