SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. 53 



with the Greek letters, numbers being reserved for Ge- 

 nera and Species. 



It would be weil for every person who undertakes 

 to write a systematic work on Botany to consider these 

 leading principles of Linnaeus, and to study with care 

 those more particular ones, laid down in his Funda- 

 menta Botanica, as well as his Philosophia and C?i- 

 tica. If his rules be faulty or unnecessary, they should 

 be expunged ; but no good writer will transgress them 

 through ignorance or neglect 



His principles for the distinction of Species should 

 be studied and contemplated over and over again, by 

 every person ambitious of permanent botanical fame, 

 beyond the reach of the fashions of System. This de- 

 partment of Botany Linnaeus justly terms art is robur, 

 the strength, or sinews of the science. Species are 

 perhaps the only distinctions which are indubitably 

 natural ; and to stamp them clearly, as well as con- 

 cisely, is the most important, perhaps the most dif- 

 ficult, office of the philosophical botanist. No one yet 

 has equalled Linnaeus; nor has any one swerved from 

 his rules, in theory or in practice, but for the worse. 

 No intended improvement in this department has 

 come under my inspection, that does not appear to 

 me worse than indifferent. I speak with the greatest 

 respect and deference for the authors of such projects, 

 which it would be invidious to particularize, and which 

 have, doubtless, been well intended. The more com- 

 mon faults in these compositions arise from negligence 



