wee. 
Dr. Lindley’s Natural System of Botany. 293 
Jussieu as a writer who “has greatly improved upon the natural 
orders of Linnzus.”* We have no hesitation, however, in express+ 
ing our conviction that no single work has had such a general and 
favorable influence upon the advancement of botanical science in 
this country, as the American edition of Dr. Lindley’s Introduction 
to the Natural System. ‘This treatise, however useful, was indeed 
not absolutely indispensable to the favored few, who, aided by the 
works of Jussieu, Brown, De Candolle, the elder and younger Rich- 
ard, &c. were already successfully and honorably pursuing their in- 
vestigations ; but to the numerous cultivators of botany throughout 
the country, who could seldom be expected to possess, or have ac- 
cess to, well furnished libraries, and to whom the writings of these 
great luminaries of the science were mostly unknown except by 
name, this publication was a truly welcome acquisition, conferring 
advantages which those alone who have pursued their studies under 
such unfavorable circumstances can fully appreciate. 
A second and greatly improved edition of this work having ap- 
peared within the past year, it occurred to the writer of these re- 
marks, that a cursory notice of it might not be unacceptable to the 
readers of the American Journal of Science. We do not intend, in 
these observations, to engage in a defense of what is called the Nat- 
ural System of Botany ; but take it for granted, that the science can 
by no other method be successfully and philosophically pursued: or, 
* Dr. Lindley is quite right in his remark that the chief difficulties the student 
has to prove in the study of botany, upon the principles of the Natural System, 
have been very much exaggerated by persons who have written upon the subject 
without understanding it. ‘To refer toasingle instance. In the fifth edition of 
the Manual of Botany, by Mr. Eaton, an account of the Natural Orders of Jussieu 
is given, in which the genera Ambrosia and Xanthium are referred to ree 
nd i in a note it is added: « Some botanists place the last two genera in the or 
ator in this instance, is Jussieu himself, who never referred these two genera to 
Urtice, but places them in his order Corymbifera, (Composite,) where they truly 
belong. The descriptions of Natural Orders in Eaton’s Manual, purporting to = 
taken from Jussieu, bear a very remote resemblance indeed to the ordinal e 
acters of the admirable Genera Piantarum of that author, while the Sleinenn 
understood by the author alluded to. It should be recollected that, previously to 
the reprint of Dr. Lindley’s Introduction, Mr. Eaton’s Manual was the only 
pr : i iew of the Natural System, within the reach of the great ma- 
jority of the botanical students of this country, excepting, perhaps, the Puerta 
edition of Smith’s Grammar of Botany. 
