356 HISTORY OF BOTANY. 



smooth and cheerful, in the American ; stunted and 

 indurated, in the Alpine." 



Again, the rule that the same parts are of very 

 different value in different Orders, not only leaves 

 us in want of rules or reasons which may enable 

 us to compare the marks of different Orders, but 

 destroys the systematic completeness of the natural 

 arrangement. If some of the Orders be regulated 

 by the flower and others by the fruit, we may have 

 plants, of which the flower would place them in 

 one Order, and the fruit in another. The answer 

 to this difficulty is the maxim already stated ; that 

 no Character wakes the Order ; and that if a Cha- 

 racter do not enable us to recognize the Order, 

 it does not answer its purpose, and ought to be 

 changed for another. 



This doctrine, that the Character is to be em- 

 ployed as a servant and not as a master, was a 

 stumbling-block in the way of those disciples who 

 looked only for dogmatical and universal rules. One 

 of Linnaeus's pupils, Paul Dietrich Giseke, has 

 given us a very lively account of his own perplexity 

 on having this view propounded to him, and of the 

 way in which he struggled with it. He had com- 

 plained of the want of intelligible grounds, in the 

 collection of natural orders given by Linnaeus. Lin- 

 naeus 17 wrote in answer, "You ask me for the cha- 

 racters of the Natural Orders : I confess I cannot 

 give them." Such a reply naturally increased 



17 Linncei Prcelectiones, Pref. p. xv. 



