32 INTRODUCTION. 



and industry of the learned were now also more 

 than ever exerted, and a variety of systems intro- 

 duced, adopted, and abandoned in their turns. 

 In the in- Of these the principal were the methods of Mor- 

 of un- tl n rison, Ray, Tournefort, Rivinus, Boerhaave, Her- 



methods man > anc ^ Magnol, which appeared about the end 

 of the seventeenth or beginning of the eighteenth 

 century, and which, whatever might have been their 

 defects, had at least the merit of exhibiting botany 

 under a new and systematic form. But the most cele- 

 brated as well as the most beautiful of them all was 

 that of Tournefort, which was adopted in France 

 with a kind of epidemic enthusiasm characteristic 

 of the nation, and admired by botanists of all 

 And prin- countries. It had indeed much merit, at least as 

 generic exhibiting the first model of generic discrimi- 

 naUon" 1 " nat i n > founded on principles truly philosophi- 

 cal. But it had also its defects ; for though ex- 

 tremely beautiful in speculation, it was yet clogged 

 with insurmountable difficulties in the practice. 



No method of arrangement, therefore, had yet 

 been discovered sufficiently suited to the exigency 

 of the case ; and a method founded on principles 

 more easily reduced to practice was still the grand 

 desideratum of botany. 

 ^J^ Which are In this peculiar crisis of botanical perplexity, 



perfected , . . . . . 



by Lin- when specimens were every day multiplying in the 

 hands of collectors, and herbariums devoid of ar- 

 rangement, and the science in danger of relapsing 

 again into an absolute chaos ; a great and elevated 



