RECENT PROGRESS OF SYSTEMATIC BOTANY. 29 
among the naturalists of Germany, I had by the year 1832 become acquainted 
not only with the principal continental botanists, but also with the practical 
working of the botanical establishments of Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Munich, and 
Geneva; and as this was a period when the gradual substitution of natural 
to artificial systems had given a general impulse to the scientific study of 
plants, I take this year as the starting-point for comparing the state of syste- 
matic botany with that of future periods. 
In France, under the guidance of De Candolle of Geneva, and of Brongniart, 
the younger Jussieu, and other Professors of Paris, it was now universally 
taught, and it had become generally acknowledged, that the main object of 
systematic botany was not the finding out the name of a plant, but the 
determining its relations and affinities, the making us thoroughly acquainted 
with its resemblances and differences, with those properties which it pos- 
sessed in common with others or which were peculiar to itself, whether 
these properties consisted in outward form, inner structure, physical con- 
stitution, or practicable applicability to use, all of which had to be taken into 
account in the formation of orders, genera, and their subdivisions. As text- 
books, De Candolle had developed his ‘ Théorie’ into the five volumes of his 
‘Cours de Botanique ’ (‘ Organographie Végétale,’ two vols., 1827, and ‘ Phy- 
siologie Végétale,’ three vols., 1832), while Richard, in the successive editions 
of his ‘ Eléments de Botanique,’ then in general use by teachers of the science, 
was substituting an elaborate exposition of the natural orders for the some- 
what modified Linnean classes he had in the first instance adopted; and for 
practical use, although De Candolle’s admirable ‘ Flore Frangaise’ was 
already out of print, Duby’s synopsis of it and a few local floras drawn 
up under the natural method had expelled from the market all technical 
works which adhered to the sexual classification. For the general botanist, 
De Candolle’s ‘ Prodromus’ had already reached its fourth volume, describing 
under the natural arrangement about 19,000 species, or nearly one third of 
those then known *. 
In England considerable progress had also been made in the substitution of 
the scientific instead of the technical arrangement of plants for study, but only 
among the more advanced followers of the science. Owing in a great mea- 
sure to the influence and persevering labours of Sir James Smith, whose pos- 
session of the Linnean collections and long Presidency of the Linnean Society 
gave him great and generally acknowledged authority in the country, the 
cataloguing of plants under the twenty-four classes was still adhered to in 
our botanical schools and examinations, and in the standard British floras as 
well as in all local ones. But this was not to be of long duration. The 
great advances made by Robert Brown, although better known on the Con- 
tinent than at home, were beginning to have their influence in England 
also. The example and teaching of Sir William (then Dr.) Hooker, whose 
vast collections and library had already, from the liberal use he made of them, 
become of national importance, had caused the natural method to be regarded 
as the only one for illustrating exotic botany and for the useful arrangement 
of herbaria. Lindley had commenced that series of works which more 
than any others tended to that final acceptance of the natural method in this 
country which it had obtained in France. The first edition of his ‘ Intro- 
duction to the Natural System’ was published in 1830; and he was much 
* For further details on the origin and progress of this great work I may refer to an 
article I contributed to the ‘Natural-History Review’ for October 1864, and to that 
recently published by Alphonse de Candolle in the ‘ Bibliothéque de Genéve,’ entitled 
“ Réflexions sur les Ouvrages g4néraux de Botanique descriptive.” 
