464 BOTANY. 



farther subdivided by those who have made the natural affini- 

 ties of plants their study. 



M. J. B. Lamarck, with the design of uniting to the artifi- 

 cial arrangement the advantages of the natural method, has de- 

 vised a plan by which all known plants may be ranged in succes- 

 sive divisions, in such a manner as to leave the alternative be- 

 tween two propositions absolutely opposite. This method, 

 which is termed the analytic, he has exemplified in the Flora of 

 France, the third edition of which, in four 8vo volumes, by MM. 

 De Lamarck and Decandolle, was published at Paris in 1 805. 



What is called the Natural Method ranges all vegetables in 

 such a manner, that, disregarding partial correspondence of parts, 

 those which agree in the greatest number of particulars are 

 grouped into families. A disposition to arrange plants accord- 

 ing to their general form and structure is traced up to Cesalpi- 

 nus, an Italian physician, who published, in 1583, the first sys- 

 tem in botany. He distributed in fifteen classes the 800 plants 

 known to him, in regard to the disposition of the embryo and 

 the structure of the fruit. Morison, professor of botany at Ox- 

 ford, added to these characters the general appearance of the 

 plant and the form of the flower ; and the celebrated Ray pub- 

 blished in 1682, a method in which the characters are drawn 

 from different parts of plants. Linnaeus himself attempted to ar- 

 range vegetable productions in natural families ; and Adanson, 

 in 1763, published his families of plants to the number of fifty- 

 ight, which comprehended 615 genera, disposed in the order 

 which appeared to him most accordant to nature. Previous to 

 this period (1759) Bernard Jussieu had disposed the plants of 

 the botanic garden at Trianon according to a particular method, 

 and after the natural order, but had published nothing regard- 

 ing the principles which had guided him in this disposition ; 

 but his nephew, Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu, after having ar- 

 ranged the Jardin des Plantes of Paris according to this me- 

 thod, published the bases of the system under the title of Ge- 

 nera Plantarum, in 1789- This method has been successive- 

 ly improved by later French naturalists. 



In arranging plants according to the natural order, the struc- 

 ture of the embryo has furnished the first divisions. Thus 



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