62 



of botanical science. Those learned men wUl all 

 grant that the most fundamental and universal ele- 

 mentary organ of vegetables is a cell ; and that the 

 entire life of a plant is the sum of the life of its 

 constituent cells. How then can we avoid the conviction 

 that the organs of this life must possess a correlative impor- 

 tance in taxonomy ? And how is the investigation of this 

 subject to be prosecuted without a careful attention to the 

 phenomena of this life ? Surely we shall never be able to 

 comprehend and realize the mysterious plans of Nature, and 

 those infinite details by which she has marked, for our in- 

 terpretation, the true affinities and contrasts of the mem- 

 bers of her system in the vegetable kingdom, unless we use 

 every diligence in our attempts to read her own characters. 

 And how are we to do this without a recognition of the 

 phenomena of the cell-life as part and parcel of the natural 

 history of every plant ? And though we have this evening 

 to treat of a very small fragment of this great argument, it is a 

 portion which has been strangely overlooked ; and this chieiiy 

 from a lamentable neglect by systematists, admirable as their 

 labours have generally been, of the cell-biography of spe- 

 cies. This neglect is the more remarkable, as the cell- 

 characters are not only eminently natural, but in some in- 

 stances, to be shown presently, aflFord the most fundamental 

 and universal single diagnostic between allied orders, and 

 Ten lower subdivisions. 



Good use, no doubt, has long since been made of the 

 intimate structure, including cells, of course, for the great or 

 primary divisions of the vegetable kingdom, such as Cellu- 

 lares and Vasculares, in systematic works. But let any one 

 refer to those works for the diagnostic characters of some of 

 our most familiar British plants, such as members of the 

 orders Onagraceae, Galiacese, and Balsaminacese, or the species 

 of the genera Ranunculus, Lotus, Juncus, Hymenophyllum, 

 and many others, when he will not find a single hint of the 

 cell-diagnostics by which, as will be shown this evening, 

 these orders or species may be at once distinguished from 



