30 



CHAPTER VI. 



PRINCIPLES OF CLASSIFICATION. 



72. tWER since Botany has assumed the form of a 

 Science, Botanists have agreed that every principle 

 of Classification must be deduced from the parts 

 of fructification (52). 



73. All botanists are also agreed, in distinguishing the 

 Vegetable Kingdom into Classes, Orders, Genera, 

 and Species. 



74. Species are generally acknowledged to be per- 

 manently distinct, though liable to Varieties, and 

 occasionally to the production of intermediate Spe- 

 cies, by the access of the Pollen (58) of one, to the 

 Stigma (59) of another ; but such appear to have 

 only a transient duration. 



75. Genera, as far as they are rightly determined, are 

 considered by Linneeus, and his scholars, as no less 

 natural than Species (73), but this opinion is re- 

 jected by many botanists, especially of the French 

 school, even while they contend for the existence of 

 natural Orders. 



76. Classes and Orders, which are assemblages of 

 Genera (75), are either natural or artificial. 



77. Natural Classes and Orders (76) are such as ap- 



