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CHAPTER IV. 



THE REFORM OF LINN^US. 



Sect. 1. Introduction of the Reform. 



A LTHOUGH, perhaps, no man of science ever 

 _t\_ exercised a greater sway than Linnaeus, or had 

 more enthusiastic admirers, the most intelligent 

 botanists always speak of him, not as a great dis- 

 coverer, but as a judicious and strenuous Reformer. 

 Indeed, in his own lists of botanical writers, he 

 places himself among the " Reformatores ;" and it 

 is apparent that this is the nature of his real claim 

 to admiration ; for the doctrine of the sexes of 

 plants, even if he had been the first to establish it, 

 was a point of botanical physiology, a province of 

 the science which no one would select as the pecu- 

 liar field of Linnseus's glory ; and the formation of 

 a system of arrangement on the basis of this doc- 

 trine, though attended with many advantages, was 

 not an improvement of any higher order than those 

 introduced by Ray and Tournefort. But as a Re- 

 former of the state of natural history in his time, 

 Linnaeus was admirable for his skill, and unparal- 

 leled in his success. And we have already seen, 

 in the instance of the reform of mineralogy, as 

 attempted by Mohs and Berzelius, that men of great 



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