CHAPTER IT. 



SYSTEMATIC BOTANY. 



IT has been already stated that the only parts of a 

 plant which are necessary to the production of seed are 

 the stamens and pistils. On these organs, therefore, the 

 learned Linnsens fixed, when framing his artificial ar- 

 rangement of plants, as affording the readiest means ot 

 referring to the written characters of plants described in 

 his works. 1 He nowhere claims the honour of having 

 discovered their importance ; on the contrary, he ex- 

 pressly alludes to a popular opinion that the fact was 

 known to Thomas Millington, a naturalist of the pre- 

 ceding century. But whoever discovered the fact, it lay 

 idle and unnoticed until Linnaeus invented and perfected 

 the system founded on the fact. This can be proved, 

 both by the jealousy with which it was received by the 

 naturalists of the day, whose favourite methods have 

 disappeared before it, as well as by the acrimony with 

 which the name and works of Linnseus are assailed by 

 some modern botanists men who, while they disparage 

 the works of their great leader, find it impossible to 

 quit the track that he has trodden out for them, from 

 a conviction that truth lies in the path that he has 

 prescribed, and nowhere else. 



The first division of Vegetables, according to the 

 system of Linnaeus, is into TWENTY-FOUR CLASSES, 

 depending on the number, position, and relative pro 

 portion of the Stamens. 



The first eleven CLASSES are characterised solely by 

 the number of the stamens, and are thus named : 



(1) The number of species known to Linnseus, in 1753, when he published 

 his " Species Plantarum," amounted only to 7,300. 



b2 



