124 Morphology bookI 



ultimately be adopted, the need of an authoritative descrip- 

 tion of the genera is imperative. Nor could it have 

 been carried out by more competent workers than 

 the great Kew authorities, who commanded the con- 

 fidence of botanists all over the world. So far as England 

 is concerned, the appearance of this great work was epoch- 

 making. 



But it was felt on all hands that the de Candollean system 

 was unsatisfactory. Its divisions were eminently artificial, 

 and though it professed to be based upon natural relation- 

 ships and affinities, its main lines had been drawn when 

 those affinities had not been properly investigated, and 

 were in many cases seriously misunderstood. The group- 

 ing together of a series of families, hardly if at all 

 related, under the head of Monochlamydeae or Incom- 

 pletae was rather a confession of ignorance than a 

 serious effort at classification. It is not a matter of 

 surprise that systematists made repeated efforts to abolish 

 the group, as we have already seen. 



Sachs abandoned the scheme of de Candolle altogether, 

 and substituted in the Lehrbuch of 1868 a system based, 

 so far as the Monocotyledons were concerned, on that of 

 Braun of 1864, but almost identical in the case of the 

 Dicotyledons with an arrangement proposed by Hanstein 

 in 1867. It did not, however, make its way into favour, 

 though it was based more closely than its predecessor upon 

 natural relationships, indicated by general structural 

 features rather than arbitrarily selected characters. 



The system devised by Eichler in 1883 gradually replaced 

 that of de Candolle in general botanical circles. It made 

 but little way in England, a circumstance due no doubt 

 to the dominating influence of the names of Bentham and 

 Hooker, and to the appearance of the Genera Plantarum. 

 It showed, however, a great advance upon those which 

 had preceded it in the importance it attached to questions 



