441 



A REVIEW OF THE MODERN STATE OF BOTANY, 



WITH A PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO THE NATURAL SYSTEMS OE 



LINNiEUS AND JUSSIEU*. 



[" A Review of the modern State of Botany," mentioned Vol. i. 

 p. 49-i, not having been printed in the Transactions of the Lin- 

 ncean Society, it may prove an acceptable addition to the present 

 work to introduce this Essay, which from its situation in the 

 Encyclopaedia Britannica, not being accessible to general readers, 

 is given entire in this place.~\ 



THE Linnsean system of botany, the principles upon 

 which it is founded, with its application to practice, have 

 all been amply elucidated in the fourth volume of the 

 Encyclopedia Britannica. The reader will there find 

 a general view of this celebrated system, including 

 the generic characters, as well as some of the specific 

 differences, of most plants hitherto discovered, with their 

 qualities and uses. The terminology of Linnseus is ex- 

 plained ; his arguments for the existence of sexes in 

 flowers are detailed ; his ideas of a natural method of 

 classification, and of its utility in leading to a knowledge 

 of the virtues of plants, are subjoined to a compendious 

 history of botanical science. < 



The writer of the present supplementary article pro- 

 poses to take a different view of the subject. This study 

 has, within twenty or thirty years past, become so popular, 

 and has been cultivated and considered in so many diffe- 

 rent ways, that no dry systematic detail of classification 

 or nomenclature is at all adequate to convey an idea of 

 what botany, as a philosophical and practical pursuit, is 

 now become. The different modes in which different 

 nations, or schools, have cultivated this science ; the cir- 



* From the second volume of the Supplement to the Encyclopedia 

 Britannica. 



