490 Mr. Biche NO on Systems and Methods 



This attempt at breaking down good orders and genera into 

 many subordinate and looselj^ defined groups, and encumbering 

 them with names, involves the subject in obscurity, and may well 

 be questioned as contrary to his main design of presenting those 

 comprehensive views which are aflbrded by a natural system. 



Mr. Brown has adopted a diti'erent mode in his " Prodromiis." 

 He has attempted to combine no further than his knowledge 

 would warrant, not even employing the terms class or order as 

 the names of his groups. As his object is chiefly synthesis, he 

 keeps his diagnostic characters apart, thus leaving the mind less 

 embarrassed when it is in pursuit of analysis. It must be ad- 

 mitted indeed, that his work cannot be employed with any suc- 

 cess by the inexperienced, or even by those who have occupied 

 themselves only in searching for species ; but to have made it 

 subservient to this purpose, would have been to have rendered 

 it less beautiful and complete as a work of synthesis. His apho- 

 risms and remarks not being reduced to exact method, " are," as 

 Lord Bacon expresses it, " still in their growth, increasing in 

 bulk and substance." 



Now wherever the object of the systematist is to enable his 

 reader to discover species, it is necessary to define at every step; 

 and where natural characters do not present themselves, we must 

 adopt artificial ones. For this purpose large classes are formed, 

 many of which are necessarily artificial. These again are broken 

 up into orders, mostly of an artificial character ; and thus the 

 naturalist is led step by step from more comprehensive definitions 

 to less, from class to order, from order to genus, and from genus 

 to species. In this descending series it will be observed that 

 the essential feature is the facility that is afibrded for definition. 

 Hence the Linnœan system of botany has succeeded so Avell, be- 

 cause its author selected chiefly as the ground of his arrange- 

 ment the number and proportion of parts most obvious and 



least 



