BOTANICAL CLASSIFICATION. 341 



693. Robert Brown, next to Jussieu, did more than any other 

 botanist for the proper establishment and correct characterization 

 of natural orders. Having in the year 1827 published his dis- 

 covery of the gymnospermy of Coniferae and Cycadaceae, it 

 was in Lindley's works that this was first turned to proper 

 systematic account by dividing the class of Dicotyledones into 

 two subclasses, the Angiospermce and the Gymnospermce. The 

 latter has been elevated by the vegetable palaeontologists to the 

 rank of a class. 



694. Stephen Ladislaus Endlicher, of Vienna, a contempo- 

 rary of Lindley, of less botanical genius, but of great erudition 

 and aptness for classification, brought out his complete Genera 

 Plantarum secundum Ordines Naturales disposita, between the 

 years 1836 and 1840. This elaborate work follows that of its 

 predecessor, Jussieu, in beginning with the lower series of plants 

 and ending with the higher. Its primary division is into two 

 regions : 1 . Thallophyta, plants without proper axis of growth 

 (developing upward as stem and downward as root), no other 

 tissue than parenchyma, and (as was thought) no proper sexes. 

 This answers to the lower or Amphigamous Cellular plants of 

 DeCandolle. 2. Cormophyta, plants with an axis (stem and root), 

 with foliage, &c. The Cormophyta, or plants of the higher 

 region, Endlicher divided into three great sections: 1. Acro- 

 brya, answering to the higher JEtheogamous Cryptogamia of 

 DeCandolle, with which was wrongly associated a group of root- 

 parasitic flowering plants (the Rhizantheae) which were fancied 

 to bear spores instead of embryo in their seed ; 2. Amphibrya, 

 which answer to Monocotyledones ; and, 3. Acramphibrya, which 

 answer to Dicotyledons. These last contain five cohorts: 1. 

 Gymnospermece ; 2. Apetalce ; 3. Gamopetalce (the Monopetalae 

 of Jussieu better named) ; 4. Dicdypetalce (the Polypetalae of 

 Jussieu, &c.). The cohort in Endlicher' s classification, it will 

 be seen, is a higher grade than that to which this name was 

 applied by Lindley in the more recent use. For the latter, i. e. 

 for the grade between these and the order, Endlicher employee! 

 the name of class. 



695. Finally, the Genera Plantarum, now in course of pub- 

 lication by George Bentham and Joseph Dalton Hooker, adopts 

 in a general way the Candollean sequence of orders, with vari- 

 ous emendations ; divides the class of Dicotyledons into two sub- 

 classes, Angiospermous and Gymnospermous ; the former into 

 the Polypetalous, Gamopetalous, and Apetalous divisions ; and 

 the first of these into the Thalamiflorous, Disciflorous, and Caly- 

 ciflorous " series " (the middle one composed of the latter part 



