144 Development of the Natural System under [book i. 



plantarum' of Bartling, an independent contribution to this 

 department of botany, and a distinct advance upon what had 

 hitherto been effected. The contemporary monographs of 

 Roeper on the Euphorbiaceae and Balsamineae and his treatise 

 'De organis plantarum' (1828), are an able, independent, and 

 logical application of the principles of the morphology of the 

 flower laid down by De Candolle and Brown to the elucidation 

 of morphological and systematic conceptions. But the new 

 methods of investigation introduced by De Candolle and 

 Robert Brown had to encounter in Germany, and to some 

 extent in France also, not only the antiquated views of Lin- 

 naeus, but, what was still worse, the erroneous notions of the 

 nature-philosophy founded by Schelling. The misty tenets of 

 this philosophy could scarcely find a more fruitful soil than the 

 natural system with its mysterious affinities, and Goethe's 

 doctrine of metamorphosis contributed not a little to 

 increase the confusion. These historical phenomena will be 

 further considered in the following chapter ; at present we are 

 more concerned to show how the professed systematists pursued 

 the path opened by De Candolle and Brown. And here it must 

 be noticed that from about the year 1830, in Germany especi- 

 ally, morphological enquiry became separated as a special 

 subject from systematic botany ; it became more and more the 

 fashion to treat the latter as independent of morphology, and 

 thus to forsake the source of deeper insight which comparative 

 and genetic morphology alone can open to the systematist ; 

 morphology on the other hand took a new flight, and as it 

 thus developed itself apart from pure systematic botany, its 

 progress must be described by itself in a later portion of this 

 history. 



If advance in systematic botany depended on the number of 

 systems that were proposed from 1825 to 1845, that period 

 must be looked upon as its golden age ; no less than twenty- 

 four systems made their appearance during these twenty years, 

 without counting those which were inspired by the views of the 



