from drawings made by native artists. This work will be published under the munificent patronage of the 
Honorable East India Company, by whose continued and liberal support and assistance Dr. Wallich has 
been enabled not only to form the extensive collection of plants which he has lately brought into this 
country, but to lay a selection of them before the British public in a manner suitable to their importance. 
The work will be comprised in twelve numbers, cach containing 25 plates, to appear every three months, 
making in the whole three volumes, of 100 figures each. 
In this work, it may be expected that Dr. Wallich will make a considerable addition to the number 
of Scitaminean Plants already known, to the study of which he has long been particularly attached; and 
that these, with the additional numbers now publishing in the many other excellent Botanical publications 
of this country, will shortly carry this beautiful and interesting portion of the science to a degree of perfection 
which may set an example to other persons to follow it, through the succeeding classes of the vegetable kingdom. 
Before I dismiss the present work I think it necessary to state, that it was not until after I 
had written and printed my lines of introduction to it, that I was apprised of the intention of Mr. Lindley, 
the present Professor of Botany in the University of London, to publish a new work entitled a Synopsis 
of the British Flora, arranged according to the natural orders; in the preface to which (as appears from 
Loudon’s Magazine of Natural History, for May 1829) are the following remarks: “ All the British Floras, 
with the exception of the Flora Scotica of Dr. Hooker, have been arranged upon the principles of a system 
which, whatever popularity it may, from particular circumstances, have acquired, and however useful it may 
be found in communicating a knowledge of the names of things, does certainly not now tend to the 
advancement of science, or to an accurate knowledge of things themselves. Of course I allude to the 
system of Linneus, a system which has almost disappeared from every country but our own, and which now 
ought to find no other place in science than among the records of things whose fame has passed away.” 
On this occasion I find it incumbent on me to declare, that in this unqualified condemnation of the Linnean 
system, the principles of which are adopted in the present volume, I can by no means agree, being convinced 
that such system will remain, as being established on the sure foundation of the sexual distinctions, whatever 
may be the fate of that of Jussieu; which may be cultivated as a separate science by those who have 
time and ability for the purpose, but which can never supersede the more attainable, concise, and certain 
arrangement of the illustrious Swede. Indeed the learned Professor has himself acknowledged that, “ after 
all that has been effected in the present case, or is likely to be accomplished hereafter, there will always 
be more difficulty in acquiring a knowledge of the Natural system of Botany than of the Linnean.” I 
shall not however enter further into the subject at present than to inform the reader, who may be 
iS > 
desirous cf obtaining further information respecting the Natural, or rather the French system, that he will find 
2 
it in an article by the late Sir J. E. Smith, President of the Linnean Society, in the second volume of the 
Supplement to the Encyclopedia Britannica, under the Title « Borany, with a particular reference to the 
and also in a paper in the eleventh volume of the Transactions of the 
Linnean Society, p. 50, “on artificial and natural arrangements of Plants,” 
systems of Linneus and Jussieu ;” 
for which I am myself accountable. 
