REFORM OF LINN.EUS. 365 



too late, to prevent these monuments of their coun- 

 tryman's labour and glory being carried from his 

 native land, and even went so far as to send ja 

 frigate in pursuit of the ship which conveyed them 

 to England. Smith had, however, the triumph of 

 bringing them home in safety. On his death they 

 were purchased by the Linnsean Society. Such 

 relics serve, as will easily be imagined, not only to 

 warm the reverence of his admirers, but to illus- 

 trate his writings : and since they have been in this 

 country, they have been the object of the pilgrimage 

 of many a botanist, from every part of Europe. 



I have purposely confined myself to the history 

 of the Linnsean system in the cases in which it is 

 most easily applicable, omitting all consideration of 

 more obscure and disputed kinds of vegetables, as 

 ferns, mosses, fungi, lichens, sea-weeds, and the like. 

 The nature and progress of a classificatory science, 

 which it is our main purpose to bring into view, 

 will best be understood by attending, in the first 

 place, to the cases in which such a science has been 

 pursued with the most decided success; and the 

 advances which have been made in the knowledge 

 of the more obscure vegetables, are, in fact, ad- 

 vances in artificial classification, only in as far as 

 they are advances in natural classification, and in 

 physiology. 



To these subjects we now proceed. 



