64 Professor Burnett's 
possible occurrence of exceptions. Exceptions, and nume- 
rous exceptions, do, nevertheless, undoubtedly exist: these 
should, however, rather stimulate us to review our natural 
classifications, than to discard them altogether; should lead 
us rather to distrust our own performance, than to accuse 
nature for a moment of egregious error. 
The true purposes and value of the natural and artificial 
systems, the aid they reciprocally afford each other, and the 
mode in which they may be most advantageously employed 
in the advancement of medico-botanical science, will form 
another very important topic, which, with the permission of 
the Council, I purpose submitting to the consideration of the 
Society. It is one that I consider of paramount importance, 
and the corelative utility of these two systems is a point for 
which I have long most ardently contended, and one which 1 
have not neglected to inculcate, both in my lectures at the 
Royal Institution, and in the medical schools of Great 
Windmill street and St. George’s Hospital: for Iam sure that 
either, when alone, would be a most imperfect guide; while 
from them in conjunction we derive a clue which will be often 
found to lead to discoveries of the greatest brilliancy and 
value. Analogy will lead to experiment, and experiment, 
guided by analogy, will lead us to truth. 
But, to conclude. In the botanical researches of this So- 
ciety, it is evident that much discretion must be exercised, so 
as to render complete the medicinal history of the subjects 
we propose to illustrate, without including in our transactions’ 
topics foreign to medico-botanical science. Hence, although 
your professor of botany is sensible, no one more so, of the 
interest and importance of anatomical and physiological, as 
well as systematic and economic botany; and although hewould 
consider himself wanting in his duty to this Society, were he 
to neglect any of these departments, all which bear, either 
directly or indirectly, on each other, still he would regard 
himself as perverting the objects of the Society, and wander- 
ing from the designs of its institution, were he to occupy the 
time of the meetings, or the pages of the Transactions, by any 
disquisitions on mere anatomical, physiological, or systematic 
themes. Many of them must, of course, engage his attention, 
as promising to throw light on medical botany; but whenever 
individual research has shown them to be impertinent thereto, 
they cease to be objects fit for presentation here. Their value 
to science, however, is not the less; at other times, and in other 
places, if presented, according to their worth so will they he 
esteemed: and this seems the more necessary to be stated, 
lest any should precipitately conclude that general botany 
