206 BOTANICAL LITERATURE. 



classes and orders, in favor of the Jussiinean, though a signifi- 

 cant movement was not a radical one, for it left the Linnpean 

 empiricism respecting genera quite undisturbed ; and the 

 genus, according to my understanding, is the fundamental 

 thing in systematic botany. But I read, on many a recent 

 page, plain evidence that some botanists of to-day are receding 

 from the Linnsean to the Tournefortian method of recognizing 

 and defining a genus. The botanical zeif geist is leading in 

 that direction. Some are following it unconsciously ; others, 

 I am certain — and among them some very eminent men 

 have been more or less carefully pondering, as if it were a 

 new volume, the old Institutiones Kei Herbari^e. This, as I 

 said at the outset, is the earliest universal treatise in which 

 the genera of plants are determined in the main by charac- 

 ters of flower and fruit. The generic characters, if divested 

 of certain phrases perpetually reiterated, are extreiuely 

 brief ; for seldom is any notice taken of other organs over 

 and above the calyx, corolla, pistil and fruit. But since.! 

 write these paragraphs not for the learned, to whom nothing 

 contained herein is new, but for the learner, and for a number 

 of readers who have not access, to the volumes of .the Insti- 

 tutiones, I shall give an example of that set form of words in 

 which the definition of each genus is cast, turning the Latin 

 into English. ,, 



" Cardamine is a genus of plants with flowers cruciform, 

 that is to say, consisting ot four petals: from whose calyx 

 arises a pistil which afterwards becomes transformed into a 

 two-celled silique having a pariiUoyi in the iniddle to which 

 adhere two valves, the cells containing seeds which are 

 inosthj orbicular. To these characteristics it should be added 

 that the valves when mature roll into a coil and eject the 

 seeds with force.' 



I have put in italics what the author held as technical in 

 the definition of this genus. Invariably this part is run 

 into a single sentence or period. Such words and phrases 

 as are here given in Roman character, are continually repeated, 

 and form a part of the description of each genus. The second 



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