90 Artificial Systems and Terminology of [BookI. 



ticulars, and above all the pre-eminent firmness and certainty 

 which distinguished his mode of dealing with systematic 

 botany, could not fail to make the profoundest impression 

 on those who judged of the powers of an investigator of 

 nature by these qualities alone. One of his greatest gifts was 

 without doubt the power which he possessed of framing pre- 

 cise and striking descriptions of species and genera in the animal 

 and vegetable kingdoms by means of a few marks contained 

 in the smallest possible number of words ; in this point he was 

 a model of unrivalled excellence to all succeeding botanists. 



On the whole the superiority of Linnaeus lay in his natural 

 gift for discriminating and classifying the objects which engaged 

 his attention ; he might almost be said to have been a classi- 

 fying, co-ordinating, and subordinating machine. He dealt 

 with everything about which he wrote in the way in which he 

 dealt with objects of natural history. The systematic botanists 

 whom he mentions in the ' Classes Plantarum ' are classified 

 then and there as fructists, corollists, and calycists. All who 

 occupy themselves in any way with botany are divided into two 

 great classes, the true botanists and mere botanophils, and it is 

 very characteristic of his way of thinking that he places 

 anatomists, gardeners, and physicians in the latter class. True 

 botanists again are either mere collectors or systematists. To 

 the collectors belong all who add to the number of known 

 plants, also authors of monographs and floras, and the 

 botanical explorers of foreign countries, whom we should 

 now more courteously call systematists. By systematists 

 Linnaeus understands those who occupy themselves with the 

 classification and naming of plants, and he divides them into 

 philosophers, systematists proper, and nomenclators ; the 

 philosophers are those who study the theory of the science 

 on principles founded on reason and observation, and are 

 subdivided into orators, institutors, erystics, and physiologists ; 

 the latter are those who discovered the mystery of sexuality in 

 plants, and hence Malpighi, Hales, and such men are not 



