THE PHYTOLOGIST. 



No. xxxviir. 



JULY, MDCCCXLIV. Price Is. 



Art. CCXXIII. — FmiJier Remarks on Botanical Classification. 

 By Philip B. Ayres, Esq., M.D. 



Thame, June 19, 1844. 

 Sir, 



I am fearful that both your readers and yourself will 

 desire that our discussion on botanical classification, and the relative 

 merits of the systems now in use, should come to an early termina- 

 tion ; and in this desire I, for one, heartily concur : not, however, 

 that T am afraid of my opponents, or ashamed of the line of argument 

 I have employed ; but that I think the pages of your journal might 

 perhaps be more profitably filled. Nevertheless, should Mr. Edmon- 

 ston or Mr. Forster prolong the controversy, I may promise them to 

 be found at my post. 



The last letter from Mr. Edmonston (Phytol. 977) was unfortu- 

 nately written before he had seen my communication in reply to Mr. 

 Forster (Id. 960) ; and having been so, the main argument of my last 

 letter on the nature of species was left untouched, or at the most but 

 slightly glanced at as a transcendental or ultra-metaphysical notion 

 or set of notions. But whether it be transcendental and ultra-meta- 

 physical or not, is a matter of little importance, since to answer the 

 purpose of Mr. Edmonston, it must be disproved. Much therefore of 

 Mr. Edmonston's renewed disquisition on the nature of species, must 

 fall to the ground, since he has taken no notice of the species of mi- 

 nerals, to which the term is fully as applicable as to plants and ani- 

 mals. Even LinnsBus himself applied the term to minerals in his 

 ' Systema Naturae,' and I suppose Mr. Edmonston will not call his 

 authority in question ! 



Now if species be applicable to minerals, the power of generating 

 their like is, as I have before shown, merely one of the characters on 

 which the induction is founded; and the attempt to reduce my argu- 

 ment to absurdity, by bringing forward hybrids between genera, orders 

 and classes, becomes completely nugatory, for the absurdity of sup- 

 posing hybrids between species of minerals, is most palpable !!! 



But further, if Mr. Edmonston will give the matter a moment's con- 



4 p 



