571 



The main end of the whole book, besides defining the 

 characters of all known genera, is to dispose them in a 

 natural series, in various classes and orders, whose tech- 

 nical distinctions are throughout attempted to be fixed 

 and contrasted. With this view, copious explanations 

 and commentaries accompany each other. We learn more 

 from the doubts of Jussieu, than from the assertions of 

 Adanson. The latter has presented us with a finished 

 system, where every genus is referred, at all hazards, to 

 some place or other. Jussieu, on the contrary, has not 

 only a large assemblage of Plantce incerta sedis, at the 

 conclusion of his system, like Linnaeus ; but at the end of 

 most of his individual orders we find some genera classed 

 as akin thereto, without answering precisely to the cha- 

 racter, or idea, of each. This circumstance, though highly 

 creditable to the candour and good sense of the author, 

 greatly interferes with the practical use of his book, ex- 

 cept for the learned. His judicious doubts, critical re- 

 marks, and especially the laxity, and consequent feeble- 

 ness, of his definitions, though eminently instructive to 

 those who want to define, or to class, a new, or obscure 

 genus, could only bewilder a learner of practical botany. A 

 person must already be deeply versed in plants, before he 

 could, by the work of Jussieu, or by any book, that we have 

 seen, classed according to his method, refer any genus to 

 its proper place, or detect any one that may be there de- 

 scribed. Nor does the difficulty to which we allude con- 

 sist so much in the intricacy of the subject, as in the 

 uncertainty, hesitation, and insufficiency of the guide ; 

 because that guide, learned as he is, chooses to conduct 

 us by a path, to which neither he nor any other mortal 

 has a perfect clue. His index indeed must be the re- 

 source of a young botanist ; who, if he knows a Rosa, a 

 Convolvulus, or an Erica, may, by finding their places and 

 their characters, trace out the allies of each, and proceed 

 step by step to acquire more comprehensive ideas. The 

 analytical mode of inquiry, which serves us in the artificial 



