84 THE SOUTH AND ITS SCIENTIFIC SCOPE 



however, forget a remark he made, saying * he was glad I 

 paid so much attention to the minute Orders and to Crypto- 

 gamic Botany, for in them would be found the foundation 

 of a truly natural system.' Now, though I do not put any 

 faith in the quinary arrangement, I believe that 5 happens 

 to be the number of groups into which mosses most naturally 

 divide themselves, and I am convinced of the truth of the 

 circular system. Fries 1 first developed it in the Fungi, 

 as Brown knows, for he pointed it out to McLeay, who 

 wrote a paper on it (Fries 's work) ; again Berkeley 2 takes 

 it up in the 'Annals,' vol. i, and quotes Montagne 3 in 

 strong confirmation. Until, however, Lindley took it up 

 I do not know any other steps taken towards arranging the 

 groups of plants on a fixed plan. Amongst mosses there 

 are many beautiful analogies in the groups, but how to 

 characterise the genera is quite a puzzle to me. Gymnos- 

 tonum must be split up, for there is hardly a genus of 

 Acrocarpi to which each of its species is not far more allied 

 than to its congeners in the present arrangement. 



The other drawings are attempts and nothing more, foi 

 they are the first Lichens I ever drew, and I am no hand at 



1 Elias Fries (1794-1878), a Swedish botanist, successively Professor 

 (1834), Director of the Botanic Gardens (1859), and Rector of the University 

 (1853) at Upsala. He was an especial authority on the Cryptogams. 



2 Miles Joseph Berkeley (1803-89), the great mycologist, was directed to 

 Natural History by the influence of Henslow at Cambridge, finally devoting 

 himself to the Cryptogams and especially to Fungi. In 1828 he first came 

 into touch with Sir W. J. Hooker, for whom he described all the fungi in the 

 volumes supplementary to The English Flora of J. E. Smith. For half a century 

 all the exotic fungi received at Kew passed through his hands, and over 400 

 papers on fungi stand under his name, apart from those at which he worked 

 in collaboration. His Introduction to Cryptogamic Botany (1857) remained 

 for many years the standard book on the subject, while he was one of the 

 pioneers of Plant pathology, popularly remembered as the investigator of the 

 potato murrain in 1846. 



3 Jean Frangois Camille Montagne (1784-1866), botanist, was left fatherless 

 very young, entered the French navy at 14, and took part in the expedition to 

 Egypt. On his return to France in 1802 he studied medicine, and in 1804 

 was attached as surgeon to a military hospital at Boulogne. He became chief 

 surgeon to Murat's army in 1815 and again in 1819, and in 1830 was head of 

 the military hospital at Sedan. He left the army in 1832 and devoted himself 

 to the study of cryptogams. Elected to the Academic des Sciences in 1853, 

 and to other Societies, and received the cross of the Legion of Honour 1858. 

 Ho contributed many papers to the Archives de Botanique and to the Annales 

 des Sciences naturelles, besides working out the Plantae Cellulares for Webb 

 and Berthelot's Phytographia Canariensis, Dumont d'Urville's Voyage au Pole 

 Sud, Gay's Historia fisica de Chile, etc., etc. 



