78 REVIEW. [March) 



species (naturale systema nihil esse nisi ignobilem quandam 

 servam, quse ad nomina specieriim cognoscenda conducat) ." "^ 



" Hence we see Dr. Lindley, in tlie books he has published in 

 our days, asserting that a natural system is not less accommo- 

 dating for this pui^oose than the sexual system of Linnaeus, 

 which, by the bye, he boasts of having rendered a matter of his- 

 tory, — shelved it for ever." The professor remarks, with great 

 simplicity, that he would not have again noticed this if the 

 learned author had not been by general consent reckoned among 

 the most celebrated botanists of the age, — a very prince, a triton 

 among minnows, — ^^si non Lindleyanum inter principes scien- 

 tise nostri aevi adnumeramus, si non de seipso prsedicasset, se 

 naturalis systematis acerrimum esse propugnatorem : scilicet 

 sua opera factum esse ut sit in Anglia illud" '^once popular but 

 superficial and useless system of Linnseus, a mere matter of 

 history. Fuit Ilium." 



The author further asserts that the reproached and exploded 

 Linnseus had a better judgment of system, and wrote more judi- 

 ciously about its object, than many in our time who profess to 

 be the exponents of Nature's laws, and who are esteemed as the 

 foremost in the construction of those systems which they fondly 

 call expositions of natural methods of arrangement. 



The third chapter is " De Methodo Systematis Naturalis," and 

 its motto is from Linnseus, " Scias characterem non constituere 

 genus, sed genus characterem." (See ante.) 



The difierence between natural and artificial systems is com- 

 monly this, viz. that the Orders in the artificial arrangements 

 are characterized by one or a few characters ; in the natural, 

 all parts of the plant characterize the Order. Our author as- 

 sumes that the above is the chief distinction, if not the only 

 one, existing between the two modes of classification; and al- 

 though admitting its truth as far as it goes, he maintains that 

 the difference between the two methods is something more than 

 this. 



The Professor now shows that the species and genera in the 

 Linnsean system, or indeed in any system whatever, are con- 

 structed or constituted on exactly the same principles as the 

 Orders in the so-called natural systems. Characters are derived 



* " That a natural system is only a humble way, or a lielp (as the Americans 

 say), wliich may assist us in ascertaining the names of species." 



