MEMOIR OF BARON HALLER. 25 



elastic' and his proximity to the Alps afforded 

 him a wide and rich field over which to expatiate. 

 Many were his excursions amidst their sublime 

 scenery, which were not more agreeable than ne- 

 cessary to his health ; and for years he was employed 

 in collecting a complete herbarium of the region. 

 The fruit of his various excursions was published 

 in two volumes folio, in 1742, under the title of 

 Enumeratio Stirpium Helveticarum, and the work 

 was adorned by a number of superb plates. In the 

 preface of this work he gives a topographical de- 

 scription of the country ; and remarks that, within 

 a narrow compass, the region comprehends the 

 plants and insects of Norway and of Italy. To 

 make his treatise the more complete, he prefixed 

 an historical exposition of all that had been pre- 

 viously written concerning the plants of the Alps, 

 from the days of Brunfelzius to his own. Being at 

 this time the youthful cotemporary of the still youth- 

 ful Linnaeus, it could not be expected that he would 

 follow that system which ere long obtained so wide a 

 celebrity. Indeed, in 1736, when Linnaaus was not 

 thirty, Haller published at Gottingen a plan for the 

 prosecution of botany, in which he recommended 

 the natural order. In his work on the Botany of 

 the Alps, he chiefly employed as characters, the 

 presence or absence of the stamens, of the corolla, 

 and of the buds; the number of stamens when 

 compared with the petals, and the number of the 

 cotyledons, as well as that of the seeds, making 

 fifteen classes in alL In the following year he pub- 



