376 HISTORY OF BOTANY. 



plants, extremely different from the genera on which 

 the arrangement was first formed, as the New Hol- 

 land genera for the most part were. He will see 

 also how impossible it must be to convey by extract 

 or description any notion of the nature of these 

 modifications: it is enough to say, that they have 

 excited the applause of botanists wherever the 

 science is studied, and that they have induced M. 

 de Humboldt and his fellow-labourers, themselves 

 botanists of the first rank, to dedicate one of their 

 works to him in terms of the strongest admiration 15 . 

 Mr. Brown has also published special disquisitions 

 on parts of the Natural System; as on Jussieu's 

 Proeacete : on the Asclepiadece, a natural family 

 of plants which must be separated from Juissieu's 

 Apocynete 1 ' 1 : and other similar labours (Q). 



We have, I think, been led, by our survey of the 

 history of Botany, to this point; that a Natural 

 Method directs us to the study of Physiology, as the 

 only means by which we can reach the object. This 

 conviction, which in botany comes at the end of a 

 long series of attempts at classification, offers itself 

 at once in the natural history of animals, where the 

 physiological signification of the resemblances and 

 differences is so much more obvious. I shall not, 

 therefore, consider any of these branches of natural 



5 Roberto Brown, Britanniarum gloriae atque ornamento, 

 totam Botanices scientiam ingenio mirifico complectenti, &c. 



16 Linn. Tr. vol. x. 1809. 



17 Mem. of Wernerian N. H. Soc. vol. i. 1809. 



