REFORM OF LINN^SUS. 353 



the injury of natural alliances, as he was, for in- 

 stance, in another portion of this very tribe of 

 Papilionacece ; for there are plants which undoubt- 

 edly belong to the tribe, but which have ten sepa- 

 rate stamens; and these he placed in the order 

 Decandria. Upon the whole, however, he inclines 

 rather to admit transgression of art than of nature. 

 The reason of this inclination was, that he rightly 

 considered an artificial method as instrumental to 

 the investigation of a natural one ; and to this part 

 of his views we now proceed. 



Sect. 5. Linnaeus s Views on a Natural Method. 



THE admirers of Linnaeus, the English especially, 

 were for some time in the habit of putting his 

 Sexual System in opposition to the Natural Method, 

 which about the same time was attempted in France. 

 And as they often appear to have imagined that the 

 ultimate object of botanical methods was to know 

 the names of plants, they naturally preferred the 

 Swedish method, which is excellent as a finder, 

 No person, however, who wishes to know botany as 

 a science, that is, as a body of general truths, can 

 be content with making names his ultimate object 

 Such a person will be constantly and irresistibly led 

 on to attempt to catch sight of the natural arrange- 

 ment of plants, even before he discovers, as he will 

 discover by pursuing such a course of study, that 

 the knowledge of the natural arrangement is the 



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