Martins, on the Life and Labors of De Candolle. 23i 



De Candolle's task was therefore six times greater than that of 

 Linnaeus, if we only take simple numbers into consideration. 

 But to this must be added the numerous difficulties which arise 

 from the dispersion of materials throughout a literature in which 

 the botanists of all civilized countries take part. Besides, in the 

 time of Linnaeus, science had much fewer foci than at present. 

 Learned societies have now been formed in North and South 

 America, in India and Java, for the promotion of the natural sci- 

 ences, and separate portions of systematic botany are treated in 

 periodical publications, monographies, and greater or smaller 

 works, written not in Latin exclusively, as was formerly the 

 case, but often in the language of the country. Hence the ac- 

 quisition of the requisite literary apparatus merely, is now with- 

 in the reach of only very considerable pecuniary means. De 

 Candolle, with the most noble disinterestedness, sacrificed in this 

 cause a great portion of his estate. 



Equally formidable are the internal obstacles attendant upon 

 the examination of vast collections of plants. The characters- 

 tics of the genera according to the natural method are made to 

 rest upon organic peculiarities, which scarcely required a notice in 

 the Linnaean system ; such for example, as the internal structure 

 of the ovary, the ovule, and the seeds. The use of the" micro- 

 scope, neglected by Linnaeus, is now become quite indispensable. 

 The distinguishing marks of species are founded on numerous, 

 and often very minute differences, which require a close examin- 

 ation of all the parts. To make out a diagnosis, the description 

 must now be more circumstantial than formerly, when a few 

 words were sufficient to discriminate between related species. 

 Linnseus's Systcma Plantaritm, in the Reichardt edition of 1779, 

 describes 7 species of the genus Eugenia, and only 13 of Myr- 

 tus. De Candolle, in the year 1828, has 194 of the former genus, 

 and 145 of the latter, of which he forms two divisions. It is 

 obvious to every one that this immense increase of the labor 

 of the systematic describer must weigh heavily upon each sepa- 

 rate species. To this must be added, finally, the necessity of 

 regarding each plant no longer merely as a prepared, or, as it 

 were, crystallized production of nature, as was done by Linnaeus, 

 but as a living and acting self-developing being: a view which 

 has been elicited by the doctrines of morphology, and which cau- 

 not now be wholly excluded from merely descriptive treatises. 



