4G3 



taught. Nor must we, in speaking of cryptogamic 

 plants, neglect here to record the names of Weis, Weber, 

 Mohr, Schmidel, Esper, and especially Hoffmann ; the 

 plates of the latter, illustrating the Lichen tribe, are 

 models of beauty and correctness. His Flor a Germanica 

 is a most convenient and compendious manual, after the 

 Linnaean system. Fungi have been studied in Germany 

 with peculiar care and minuteness. The leading syste- 

 matic author in this obscure tribe, Persoon, was indeed 

 born, of Dutch parents, at the Cape of Good Hope ; but 

 he studied and published at Gbttingen. Two writers, of 

 the name of Albertini and Schweiniz, have published the 

 most minute and accurate exemplification of this natural 

 order, in an octavo volume, at Leipsic, in the year 1805, 

 comprising the Fungi of the district of Nisid in Upper 

 Lusatia. If their figures are less exquisitely finished 

 than Persoon's, or less elaborately detailed than Schra- 

 der's, their descriptions make ample amends. 



The German school of botany has, for a long period, 

 been almost completely Linnaean. This however was not 

 always the case, for, in the earlier part of his career, the 

 learned Swede was attacked more repeatedly and severely 

 from this quarter of the world than any other ; his ridi- 

 culous critic Siegesbeck of Petersburgh excepted, who 

 would not admit the doctrine of the sexes of plants, be- 

 cause the pollen of one flower may fly upon another, and 

 his purity could not bear the idea of such adultery in 

 Nature. Numerous methods of arrangement appeared 

 in Germany, from the pens of Heister, Ludwig, Haller, 

 and others, and even Schreber adopted a system like some 

 of these in his Flora above mentioned. It would be to 

 no purpose now to criticize these attempts. They cannot 

 rank as natural systems, nor have they the convenience of 

 artificial ones. Part of their principles are derived from 

 Linnaeus, others from Rivinus. Their authors were not 

 extensively conversant with plants, nor trained in any 

 sound principles of generic discrimination or combination. 



