362 HISTORY OF BOTANY. 



too merely artificial. In France, it did not make 

 any rapid or extensive progress: the best French 

 botanists were at this time occupied with the solu- 

 tion of the great problem of the construction of a 

 natural method. And though the rhetorician Rous- 

 seau, charmed, we ma}> suppose, with the elegant 

 precision of the PMlosophia Botanica, declared it 

 to be the most philosophical work he had ever 

 read in his life, Buffon and Adanson, describers 

 and philosophers of a more ambitious school, felt a 

 repugnance to the rigorous rules, and limited, but 

 finished, undertakings of the Swedish naturalist. To 

 resist his criticism and his influence, they armed 

 themselves with dislike and contempt. 



In England the Linnsean system was very favour- 

 ably received : perhaps the more favourably, for 

 being a strictly artificial system. For the inde- 

 finite and unfinished form which almost inevitably 

 clings to a natural method, appears to be peculiarly 

 distasteful to our countrymen. It might seem as 

 if the suspense and craving which comes with know- 

 ledge confessedly incomplete were so disagreeable 

 to them, that they were willing to avoid it, at any 

 rate whatever; either by rejecting system altogether, 

 or by accepting a dogmatical system without re- 

 serve. The former has been their course in recent 

 times with regard to Mineralogy ; the latter was 

 their proceeding with respect to the Linnsean 

 Botany. It is in this country alone, I believe, that 

 Wernerian and Linncean Societies have been insti- 



