ARTIFICIAL CLASSIFICATION. 181 



the other hand, it is chiefly desired to mark out the differences of 

 plants, in order simply to their easy recognition, Artificial Methods 

 are resorted to, which are carried out by a principle of analysis, 

 whereby the whole mass of known forms is taken and gradually 

 parcelled out into Classes, Orders, &c., according to their agree- 

 ment or difference in certain fixed characters. 



Most of the older systems were more or less Artificial, the earliest 

 commencing with the division of plants into Trees, Shrubs, and 

 Herbs, Land -plants and Water-plants, and the like. As advances 

 were made, organs of more and more importance were chosen to 

 furnish characters ; and we find plants subsequently classed by 

 their corollas, by their fruits, &c. ; but in none of the systems pro- 

 posed before the time of Linnaeus do we find one given principle 

 carried out through the whole. 



The Linnsean System. "When Linnaeus entered upon his labours, 

 there lay before him a mass of information in a very unmanageable 

 condition. His reforming genius introduced order, in the first 

 instance, by the substitution of short fixed names for species, on 

 the binomial plan, by the definition and secure establishment of im- 

 perfectly characterized genera and species, and then advanced to 

 the necessary task of arranging the genera so as to render them 

 recognizable. The artificial methods founded on the floral enve- 

 lopes &c. had proved insufficient ; and therefore he turned to the 

 essential organs of flowers, the physiological importance of which he 

 himself contributed greatly to establish. The selection of these 

 organs resulted in the formation of an Artificial System in which a 

 fixed principle is regularly carried out, and which, from the phy- 

 siological importance of the characters employed, approaches in 

 certain of its coordinations to a natural arrangement. 



Species and Genera form the foundation of all Systems. The 

 object of the Linnsean System was to arrange genera in groups 

 characterized by simple striking marks, so that the existing 

 description of a given plant might be readily found, or the de- 

 scription of a new plant might be placed where it would be easily 

 referred to. Such marks Linnaeus obtained in the essential or 

 sexual organs of plants (in flowers, the stamens and pistils}, whence 

 his System is sometimes called the Sexual System. The highest or 

 most general groups, which he called Classes, are founded on the 

 conditions of the stamens. These Classes are subdivided into 

 Orders, founded either on the conditions of the pistils or upon 

 secondary characters of the stamens. The orders include the Genera 

 (in large Orders grouped into sections according to various artificial 

 characters). The Linnaean Classes are twenty-four in number, of 

 which the first twenty-three include all Flowering Plants : the 



