495 



Now they are found to agree well with some of the esta- 

 blished classes and orders, where they meet with several 

 of their natural allies. 



Whatever advantages might accrue to the practical 

 study of botany, from the convenience and facility of his 

 artificial system, Linnaeus was from the beginning intent 

 on the discovery of a more philosophical arrangement of 

 plants, or, in other words, the classification of nature. 

 This appears from the 77th aphorism of the very first 

 edition of his Fundamenta Botanica, published in 1736, 

 where he mentions his design of attempting to trace out 

 fragments of a natural method. In the corresponding- 

 section of his Philosophia Botanica, he, fifteen years af- 

 terwards, performed his promise ; and the same Frag- 

 menta, as he modestly called them, were subjoined to the 

 6th edition of his Genera Plant arum, the last that ever 

 came from his own hands. The interleaved copies of 

 these works, with his manuscript notes, evince how assi- 

 duously and constantly he laboured at this subject, as long- 

 as he lived. He was accustomed to deliver a particular 

 course of lectures upon it, from time to time, to a small 

 and select number of pupils, who were for this purpose 

 domesticated under his roof. What this great botanist 

 has himself given to the world, on the subject under con- 

 sideration, is indeed nothing more than a skeleton of a 

 system, consisting of mere names or titles of natural or- 

 ders, amounting in his Philosophia to 67, besides an ap- 

 pendix of doubtful genera ; and that number is, in the 

 Genera Plantar um, reduced to 58. 



Under the title of each order, the genera which com- 

 pose it are ranged according to the author's ideas of their 

 relationship to each other, as appears by some of his ma- 

 nuscript corrections ; and some of the orders are subdi- 

 vided into sections, or parcels of genera more akin to each 

 other than to the rest. He ingenuously avowed, at all 

 times, his inability to define his orders by characters. He 

 conceived that they were more or less connected with 



