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far back, into the second class. If all ideas of natural 

 affinity be discarded from our minds, there is no harm 

 whatever in this ; but if the Didynamia claims any credit, 

 as a class founded in nature, the above anomaly is a de- 

 fect. So, still more, under the same point of view, is the 

 Diadelphia, or at least its principal order Decandria, lia- 

 ble to exception. This order consists entirely of the very 

 natural family of Papilionacece. They are characterized 

 as having the ten stamens in two sets. Now it happens 

 that there are many papilionaceous genera, indeed a great 

 number of such have been discovered since Linnseus 

 wrote, whose ten stamens are all perfectly distinct. These 

 therefore are necessarily referred to the class Decandria, 

 and they come not altogether amiss there, because they 

 meet, in that class, some concomitant genera, which though, 

 like them, leguminous, are less exactly, or scarcely at all, 

 papilionaceous. But the greatest complaint lies against 

 some genera of the Diadelphia Decandria, for having 

 the stamens all really combined into one set, so as in 

 truth to answer to the technical character of the pre- 

 ceding class, Monadelphia. There is mostly indeed some 

 indication of a disunion upward, where they, more or 

 less perfectly, form two sets ; and some of them are 

 so nearly diadelphous, that their complete union at the 

 bottom may easily be overlooked ; others, however, have 

 only a fissure along the upper side of their common tube, 

 without any traces of a separate stamen or stamens. 

 The papilionaceous character of the corolla therefore, in 

 such cases, is made to overrule that of the particular 

 mode of union among the stamens, and is in itself so clear, 

 as seldom to be attended with any difficulty ; but the 

 incorrectness of principle in the system, in the point be- 

 fore us, as being neither professedly natural, nor exactly 

 artificial, cannot be concealed. Part of the objections, 

 to which the sexual system was originally liable, have been 

 obviated. We mean what concerns the last class but 



