PROGRESS TOWARDS A NATURAL SYSTEM. 375 



1803, Salisbury 14 had already assailed the machinery 

 of the system, maintaining that there are no cases 

 of perigynous stamens, as Jussieu assumes ; out 

 this he urges with great expressions of respect for 

 the author of the method. And the more profound 

 botanists of England soon showed that they could 

 appreciate and extend the natural method. Robert 

 Brown, who had accompanied Captain Flinders to 

 New Holland in 1801, and who, after examining 

 that country, brought home, in 1805, nearly four 

 thousand species of plants, was the most distin- 

 guished example of this. In his preface to the 

 Prodromus Florae Novce Hollandice, he says, that he 

 found himself under the necessity of employing the 

 natural method, as the only way of avoiding serious 

 errour, when he had to deal with so many new 

 genera as occur in New Holland ; and that he has, 

 therefore, followed the method of Jussieu; the 

 greater part of whose orders are truly natural, 

 "although their arrangement in classes, as is," he 

 says, " conceded by their author, no less candid than 

 learned, is often artificial, and, as appears to me, 

 rests on doubtful grounds." 



From what has already been said, the reader will, 

 I trust, see what an extensive and exact knowledge 

 of the vegetable world, and what comprehensive 

 views of affinity must, be requisite in a person who 

 has to modify the natural system so as to make it 

 suited to receive and arrange a great number of new 



14 Linn. Tr. vol. viii. 



