290 Observations on the 



after a certain period, we become unalterably wedded to those 

 doctrines which we first imbibed; which we have long been ac- 

 customed to consider as axioms, and to dwell upon with self- 

 complacency. Knowledge will still increase ; and the time may 

 come when we ourselves may view, if not v/ith jealousy, yet with 

 coldness and suspicion, the new theories that may hereafter arise, 

 from a more extensive acquaintance with Nature. It is related 

 of Linnajus, that when, in the ardour of youth and science, he 

 came to visit the botanists and gardens of England, on his intro- 

 duction to the great and venerable Sir Hans Sloane, that distin- 

 guished man received the young stranger but coldly ; being 

 unwilling, as his biographer states, " to have his botanical creed 

 rnterrupted, by innovations so totally subversive of the system he 

 had so long cherished ; Sir Hans being then in his seventy-eighth 

 year." If therefore the younger botanists of that age had sub- 

 scribed to the opinion of this great and good man, and, like him, 

 had settled in their minds that the systems of Ray and 

 Tournefort had displayed all that nature could teach, and that 

 nothing more was to be studied than the characters of new 

 species, neither the names of Jussieu, Smith, Brown, nor 

 Decandolle, with a host of others, would perhaps have been 

 known : nay, not even that of Linnsus himself. His system would 

 have been rejected as presuming to teach more than others, and 

 he himself aspersed as being the greatest innovator on the science 

 he professed to advance. The censure that must have been cast 

 upon the Systema Natura; by the admirers of those systems it 

 intended to supplant, was, no doubt, much greater than what is 

 now bestowed upon the promoters of general views and the 

 institutors of new genera. Yet, in spite of every opposition, the 

 Linnasan system became firmly established ; so true it is, that 

 Science can never remain stationary, or the inquiring mind be 

 deterred from searching out fresh springs of knowledge. It is 

 confessed on all sides, that the botanical labours of Linnajus are 

 infinitely more valuable than those which relate to the animal 

 kingdom ; yet the former have undergone the greatest change, 

 with little or no opposition, from succeeding botanists ; for not 

 one can be named, of any eminence, who has opposed the ad- 



