34 Remarks cm M. Bory de St- Vincent's 



ted the eagerness of French patriots to support the fame of 

 their own great men ; and, accordingly, neglecting an arrange- 

 ment which, though artificial, seems admirably calculated for 

 the purpose in view, they have so far succeeded, as to plunge 

 the study in a chaos of unintelligible systems and names — and 

 to make it a greater difficulty to ascertain the identity of a 

 single species through its thousand and one synonyms, than 

 it would be to study a whole chapter of nature in the book of 

 her ablest expositor. 



In speaking thus of the tendency of the French systems, 

 and those of their imitators in the rest of Europe and in this 

 country — dazzled by the lustre of a few great names — we are 

 far from undervaluing what is termed the Natural System 

 in the study of Botany, or in the other branches of Natural 

 History. Linnaeus himself was aware of its importance in a 

 general view, but found the impossibility of applying it to the 

 practical purpose of identifying and arranging genera and 

 species in the speediest and simplest manner ; and its advo- 

 cates have many, and almost insurmountable, obstacles to get 

 over, before they can turn it to this use. 



Neither do we say that the discoveries in Natural Science 

 since the time of Linnaeus do not render some modifications 

 of his system absolutely necessary. In many departments, the 

 numerous and new objects that have been brought to light, 

 rendered it necessary to adopt new genera and species to bring 

 them under the Linnasan arrangement ; and certain of the Lin- 

 naean classes, particularly Ivsecta and Vermes, and in Botany the 

 class Cryptogam-la, required to be re-modelled, as they have 

 been in many instances, by able writers. But these modifi- 

 cations should be as much as possible assimilated to the ter- 

 minology of the great institutional writer who first reduced con- 

 fusion into order in arranging and naming the objects of nature, 

 and whose system and language are still the common medium 

 of communication among the learned in all parts of the world. 

 Every additional and unnecessary term introduced into science, 

 is a useless load upon the memory, and every change of no- 

 menclature, not imperiously called for. tends rather to retro- 

 grade than advance its interests. From not attending to this, 

 many of the petty proposers of systems and arrangements 



