Martins on the Life and Labours of DeCandolle. 15 



upon with unexampled diligence until the end of his days. Since 

 the death of ^Villdenow (in the year 1810) and the publication of the 

 'Enchiridion Botanicon^ of Persoon in 1809, botanical literature 

 comprised no work which presented a universal ^dew of all known 

 plants according to their genera and species. The new edition 

 of the ' Systema Vegetabilium' of Roiuer and Schultes made but 

 little progress after the death of the former. The systematic 

 knowledge of plants remained in a fluctuating state. Whilst nu- 

 merous monogi'aphs appeared, and the materials were multiplied 

 by discoveries in all the countries of the earth, there was no clue 

 to guide in the labyrinth of countless forms. At the same time, 

 the necessity was constantly more and more felt of arranging 

 plants, not in the dead framework of the Linnsean sexual system, 

 but according to the so-called natural families in a comprehensive 

 scientific whole. If wc are not even yet able to conceive of these 

 original tj^^es, as so many foci of the moving and forming spirit 

 penading the vegetable world, expressed in each individual case 

 by more or less striking external characters ; if we are obliged in 

 the first instance to adhere to collective characters, that is, to the 

 admission of a certain sum of distinctive marks ; if it must further 

 be acknowledged, that although we can perceive the principal cha- 

 racteristics, as they exhibit themselves in a few families, yet that 

 we lose them entirely in their organic, that is, in their universal 

 connexion — in their evolution, as it were, out of each other ; if 

 especially we cannot deny that the natural method does not yet 

 bring with it any philosophic satisfaction ; that above all, the in- 

 ward tnith does not harmonize perfectly with any system, — it 

 must however be acknowledged, that we can in no other way 

 attain to an understanding of the kingdom of plants as a great 

 whole, than by the path of a thoroughly concrete examination, led 

 by the hand of analogy and induction. The German students 

 of nature acknowledge that such an understanding caimot be ob- 

 tained by speculation, nor by any constructive method ; and they 

 can only promise themselves favourable results by pursuing the 

 path opened by Jussieu's ' Methode Naturelle.' In other coun- 

 tries also — for example, in France and England, more recently in 

 Italy likewise — Ju^ssieu's doctrines had already struck powerful 

 roots ; and thus was the age expecting and prepared for a work 

 which should extend the applications of the "natural system," 

 cariying it on from the genera in which its founder had repre- 

 sented it, to the species, and giving by means of it a full and sa- 

 tisfactoiy description of the latter. 



In order to have a due conception of the vastness of this un- 

 dertaking and its enormous difficulties, it is necessary that we 

 should glance at the progress of descriptive botany. This part of 

 the science, which so many regard as a lifeless register, others as 



