Development of the Natural System. 109 



text-book of botany came to look more like a Latin dictionary 

 than a scientific treatise. In proof of this we may appeal to 

 Bemhardi's 'HandbuchderBotanik,' published at Erfurt in 1 804, 

 and Bemhardi was one of the best representatives of German 

 botany of the time. How botany, especially in Germany, 

 gradually degenerated under the influence of Linnaeus' authority 

 into an easy-going insipid dilettantism may very well be seen 

 from the botanical periodical, entitled ■ Flora,' the first volumes 

 of which cover the greater part of the first fifty years of the 

 19th century ; it is scarcely conceivable how men of some culti- 

 vation could occupy themselves with such worthless matter. 

 It would be quite lost labour to give any detailed account of 

 this kind of scientific life, if it can be so called, this dull occu- 

 pation of plant-collectors, who called themselves systematists, in 

 entire contravention of the meaning of the word. It is true 

 indeed that these adherents of Linnaeus did some service to 

 botany by searching the floras of Europe and of other quarters 

 of the globe, but they left it to others to turn to scientific 

 account the material which they collected. 



But before this evil had spread very widely, a new direction 

 to the study of systematic botany and morphology was given in 

 France, where the sexual system had never met with great accept- 

 ance. Bernard de Jussieu and his nephew, Antoine Laurent de 

 Jussieu, taking up Linnaeus' profounder and properly scientific 

 efforts, made the working out of the natural system, in Lin- 

 naeus' own opinion the highest aim of botany, the task of their 

 lives. Here more was needed than a perpetual repetition of 

 descriptions of single plants after a fixed pattern ; more exact 

 inquiries into the organisation of plants, and especially of the 

 parts of the fructification, must supply the foundation of larger 

 natural groups. It was a question therefore of new inductive 

 investigation, of real physical science, of penetrating into the 

 secrets of organic form, whereas the botanists who confined 

 themselves to Linnaeus' art of description made no new dis- 

 coveries respecting the nature of plants. And if these men 



