378 THE INDUCTIONS OF BIOLOGY. 



still depended on; and an arrangement, iij great measure 

 serial, is based on the degrees in which these attributes are 

 possessed. In 1703, some thirty years before the time of 

 Linnaeus, our countryman Eay had sketched the outlines of a 

 more advanced system. He said that — 

 Plants are either 



Flowerless, or 



Flowering ; and these are 

 Dicotyledones, or 

 Monoeotyledones. 

 Among the minor groups which he placed under these general 

 heads, " were Fungi, Mosses, Ferns, Composites, Cichoraceae, 

 Umbellifers, Papilionaceous plants, Conifers, Labiates, &c., 

 under other names, but with limits not very different from 

 those now assigned to them/' Being much in advance of his 

 age, Eay's ideas remained dormant until the time of Jus- 

 sieu; by whom they were developed into what has become 

 known as the Natural System: a system subsequently im- 

 proved by De Candolle. Passing through various modifica- 

 tions in the hands of successive botanists, the Natural Sys- 

 tem is now represented by the following form, which is 

 based upon the table of contents prefixed to Vol. II. of Prof. 

 Oliver's translation of the Natural History of Plants, by Prof. 

 Kerner. His first division, Myxothallophyta (= Myxomy- 

 cetes), I have ventured to omit. The territory it occupies 

 is in dispute between zoologists and botanists, and as I have 

 included the group in the zoological classification, agreeing 

 that its traits are more animal than vegetal, I cannot also 

 include it in the botanical classification. 



Here, linear arrangement has disappeared: there is a 

 breaking up into groups and sub-groups and sub-sub-groups, 

 which do not admit of being placed in serial order, but only 

 in divergent and re-divergent order. Were there space to 

 exhibit the way in which the Alliances are subdivided into 

 Orders, and these into Genera, and these into Species, the 

 same principle of co-ordination would be still further mani- 



