26 The Science of Life. 



Systems of classification proposed by those who 

 followed more or less faithfully the models of work 

 furnished by De Candolle and Robert Brown grew and 

 multiplied exceedingly; for many years in succession 

 there was one of some pretensions each spring; the 

 most noteworthy were those of Bartling, Endlicher, 

 Brongniart, and Lindley, which bring us down to the 

 time when evolutionary ideas began to assert their 

 ferment-like influence. 



It is not possible for us within our limits to follow 

 the modern progress of systematic botany. The gist of 

 a physiological discovery may often be stated briefly, 

 but discoveries in classification require much exposition. 

 That there has been great progress is certain. As 

 Professor Marshall Ward has said, "The competent 

 historian of our branch of science will have no lack of 

 materials when he comes to review the progress of 

 botany during the latter half of the Victorian reign. 

 The task of doing justice to the work in phanerogamic 

 botany alone, under the leadership of men like Hooker, 

 Asa Gray, Mueller, Engler, Warming, and the army of 

 systematists so busily shifting the frontiers of the vari- 

 ous natural groups of flowering plants, will need able 

 hands for satisfactory treatment. A mere sketch of the 

 influence of Kew, the principal centre of systematic 

 botany, and of the active contingents of Indian and 

 colonial botanists working under its inspiration, will 

 alone require an important chapter, and it will need full 

 knowledge and a wide vision to avoid inadequacy of 

 treatment of its powerful stimulus on all departments of 

 post-Darwinian botany." 



