466 



seeds, we believe him mistaken in distinguishing the vi- 

 tellus as a separate organ, distinct in functions from the 

 cotyledons. His readers will also do well, while they 

 profit by his generally excellent principles, not to admit 

 any of his rules as absolute. They may serve as a clue to 

 the intricacies of Nature, but they must not overrule her 

 laws. Still less is our great carpologist to be implicitly 

 followed in physiological doctrines or reasonings ; witness 

 his feeble and incorrect attack on Hed wig's opinions, or 

 rather demonstrations, respecting the impregnation of 

 Mosses. His criticisms of Linnaeus are not always marked 

 with that candour which becomes a disinterested lover of 

 truth and nature, nor can we applaud in general his 

 changes of nomenclature, or of terminology ; especially 

 when he unphilosophically calls the germen of Linnaeus, 

 the ovarium, a word long ago rejected, as erroneous when 

 applied to plants. These however are slight blemishes, 

 in a reputation which will last as long as scientific botany 

 is cultivated at all. Botanists can now no longer neglect, 

 but at their own peril, the parts which Gaertnerhas called 

 into notice, and to the scrutiny of which, directed by his 

 faithful guidance, the physiologist and the systematic 

 must often, in future, recur. 



We shall close this part of our subject with the men- 

 tion of the Berlin school, where Gleditsch, who, in 1740, 

 repelled the attacks of Siegesbeck on Linnaeus, was Pro- 

 fessor, and published a botanical system, founded on the 

 situation, or insertion, of the stamens ; the subordinate 

 divisions being taken from the number of the same parts; 

 so that it is, in the latter respect, a sort of inversion of 

 the Linnaean method. In the former, or the outline of 

 its plan, the system of Gleditsch is in some measure an 

 anticipation of that of Jussieu. Berlin has of late been 

 much distinguished for the study of natural history, and 

 possesses a society of its own, devoted to that pursuit. 

 Its greatest ornament was the late Professor Willdenow, 

 who, if he fell under the lash of the more accurate Afze- 



