1859.] REVIEW. 75 



moveri) . Plence every system and all inquiries into Nature are 

 like a house built of cards^ which will fall to pieces by the least 

 motion^ and must be built up ancAv upon an equally insecure foun- 

 dation. ..." But if we admit that Nature preserves a certain 

 law in those forms which we call species, then species are not 

 defined or limited artificially, but by Nature; but forasmuch as 

 the words we have quoted^ from Lindley and Fries show that the 

 opinions of the learned are not the same about the larger groups, 

 which we call genera and families, it is our business diligently 

 to consider this question " (p. iii.) . 



The professor then asks the following pertinent questions : — 

 "And in the first place I would just ask those who maintain 

 that some orders and genera are natural and others not, whether 

 they admit the same uncertainty among the Salices and Eryngos, 

 the Labiates and the Umbellifers, fishes and birds, plants and 

 animals ! ! Are not all these formed and defined by Nature ? Are 

 not the species of the genus Salix formed in conformity with a 

 a typ:e common to all? If it be admitted that species or the 

 lower groups are natural, it follows that the same must be predi- 

 cated of genera, orders, etc., the higher or more comprehensive 

 groups." 



As an example of the indefinite views prevalent on arrangement, 

 the author remarks that Endlicher unites the Lahiatce and Bora- 

 gine<s, while more recent writers find scarcely any difference be- 

 tween these two Orders, except in the form of the corolla and in 

 the position of the radicle, and at the same time truly states, 

 " that in the Order Caprifoliaceee there is an example of an irre- 

 gular and a regular corolla ; and in the genus Euonymus he finds 

 the radicle sometimes superior and sometimes inferior." He also 

 notes, that by assuming some organs as characteristic, and by sup- 

 pressing others. Orders may be established ad libitum ; for ex- 

 ample, Labiata and Boraginece might be united, but not into a 

 Natural Order. 



The opinion that some Orders are less artificial than others is 

 quoted, and he then asks, if it can be demonstrated that some 

 assemblages are natural, or that Nature has followed {servasse) 



* Bot. Reg. vol. xiii. p. 1066. " All genera, and indeed all the divisions of natu- 

 ralists, are necessarily artificial ; and when one genus is called natural and another 

 artificial, all that can be meant by such expi'essions is, that the species of the 

 one are less artificially combined than those of the other, etc." 



