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cumstances which have led some botanists to the investi- 

 gation of certain subjects more than others ; and the 

 particular success of each; may prove an amusing and 

 instructive object of contemplation. In this detail, the 

 history of scientific botany will appear under a new as- 

 pect, as rather an account of what is doing, than what is 

 accomplished. The more abstruse principles of classifi- 

 cation will be canvassed ; and the attention of the student 

 may incidentally be recalled to such as have been neg- 

 lected, or not sufficiently understood. The natural and 

 artificial methods of classification having been, contrary 

 to the wise intention of the great man who first distin- 

 guished them from each other, placed in opposition, and 

 set at variance, it becomes necessary to investigate the 

 pretensions of each. The natural method of Linnaeus 

 may thus be compared with his artificial one ; and as the 

 competitors of the latter have long ceased to be more than 

 objects of mere curiosity, we shall have occasion to show 

 how much the rivals of the former are indebted to both. 

 In the progress of this inquiry, the writer, who has lived 

 and studied among the chief of these botanical polemics, 

 during a great part of their progress, may possibly find 

 an occasional clue for his guidance, which their own 

 works would not supply. No one can more esteem their 

 talents, their zeal, and the personal merits of the greater 

 part, than the author of these pages ; but no one is more 

 independent of theoretical opinions, or less dazzled by 

 their splendour, even when they do not, as is too often 

 the case, prove adverse to the discovery of truth. Nor 

 is he less anxious to avoid personal partiality. Incorrup- 

 tam jidem professis, nee amove quisquam, et sine odio, di- 

 cendus est. 



About the end of the seventeenth century, and the be- 

 ginning of the eighteenth, the necessity of some botanical 

 system, of arrangement as well as nomenclature, by which 

 the cultivators of this pleasing science might understand 

 each other, became every day more apparent. Nor was 



