315 



llie author the benefit, and admit that he " used no ' dolorous terms,' 

 made no ' lachrymose observations^ and uttered no lamentations^ as 

 is represented in the ' Phytologist,' " save and except such as we have 

 just cited. 



No one who knows anything of the history of the science will 

 attempt to deny that " when the Linngean system of botany came to 

 be understood, it was enthusiastically embraced by almost every bo- 

 tanist in the civilized world, and in no country, perhaps, more cor- 

 dially than in England ;" and we freely grant that " all former methods 

 sank into insignificance before it:" as well as that from its ready 

 applicability in comparison with all those methods which had pre- 

 viously been promulgated, " thousands became attached to the pur- 

 suit of botanical science, who, but for it, would never have spent a 

 thought upon the subject." In all this we cordially agree with the 

 author of the ' Observations.' But the Linnaean system by no means 

 owed its celebrity solely to the ease with which stamens and pistils 

 could be counted. Linnaeus was the first botanist to demonstrate the 

 importance of these organs in the vegetable economy ; and much of 

 the attention bestowed upon his system, was due to the novelty of its 

 having been founded upon organs previously all but entirely neg- 

 lected in botanical classifications and arrangements. But this was 

 not all. The great author of this celebrated system combined with 

 the innovation many other changes of the highest importance. He 

 cleared up much of the confusion consequent upon the creeping in of 

 a host of ill-defined and doubtful species, and of varieties considered 

 as species by his predecessors; he framed an admirable code of laws 

 whereby botanical terminology was rendered precise and expressive ; 

 but above all, the binominal nomenclature introduced by him freed 

 the memory and charmed by its simplicity, and at once did away with 

 the cumbrous and unwieldy mode of naming plants previously in use. 

 All these improvements tended to fix upon the novel scheme of clas- 

 sification the attention of the learned world, and combined to render 

 its dominion secure until it should have effected its purpose, until that 

 " primum et ultiraum in botanicis desideratum " — a more philosophi- 

 cal method of arrangement so ardently sought after by its author — 

 should be discovered. 



We must here disclaim in toto all participation in " the fashion of 

 the present day to vilify, ridicule, and speak of as useless " a system 

 by which so large an amount of good has been effected : we are too 

 much indebted to the Linnaean artificial method to do this ; and have 

 ever regretted the course which has been adopted by others in their 



