ON THE MORPHOLOGICAL VIEW OF NATURE. 221 



distinguish at the first glance the plants of different 

 quarters of the globe, and yet will be at a loss to tell by 

 what mark he detects them. There is, I know not what 

 look sinister, obscure, in African plants ; superb and 

 elevated in the Asiatic; smooth and cheerful in the 

 American ; stunted and indurated in the Alpines." 1 The 

 inventor of the sexual system of plants, which proved to 

 be such a good " finder " in the hands of the botanist and 

 herbalist, speaks of the difficulty of the task of discover- 

 ing the natural orders. " Yet," he says, " I, too, have 

 laboured at this have done something, have much still 

 to do, and shall labour at the object as long as I live." 2 



Linnaeus's artificial system met with little acceptance 20. 



Linnaeus and 



in France, where, under the opposite influence of Buffon/ 5 



1 Quoted by Whewell ('Hist. ,' vol. 

 iii. p. 268) from the ' Philosophia 

 Botanica' (1751). 



2 Ibid., quoted from the ' Classes 

 Plantarum ' (1738). Julius Sachs, 

 in his excellent ' History of Botany ' 

 (Munich, 1875, transl. from the Ger- 

 man by H. E. Garnsey, 1890), says 

 of Linnaeus, that in his morpho- 

 logical as well as in his systematic 

 labours, there existed two unre- 

 conciled conceptions a superficial 

 one, meant only for practical use, 

 which found expression in his arti- 

 ficial sexual system, and a deeper, 

 scientifically valuable one. " For 

 practical purposes of description he 

 elaborated his nomenclature of the 

 parts which, however useful, appears 

 nevertheless flat and superficial, as 

 any deeper foundation through a 

 comparative study of forms is want- 

 ing. But alongside of this, there 

 appears in various passages of his 

 writings the desire for a more pro- 

 found conception of plant - forms. 

 What he had to say on this subject 

 he brought together under the 



term ' metamorphosis plantarum ' " 

 (p. 110 of the German edition). 



3 Buffon's great name has a place 

 in the history of the genetic as well 

 as of the morphological view of 

 nature, inasmuch as he looked at 

 the things of nature as much from 

 the side of their individual speciality 

 as from that of their connection 

 and orderly arrangement in time 

 and space. And inasmuch as he 

 "does not only consider the form, 

 but tries to maintain an interest in 

 the general economy of the whole 

 of nature by picturing to us the 

 homes, the habits and customs, the 

 instincts, &c., of living things, so 

 he strove in general to represent 

 the single phenomena of nature as 

 existing in intimate connection " 

 (Carus, ' Gesch. der Zoologie,' p. 

 523). "As Buffon opposed the ex- 

 treme systematisers, who seemed to 

 think it the end of science, not so 

 much to know about an object as to 

 be able to name it, and fit it into 

 their system, so Daubenton (the 

 collaborator of Buffon in France) 



