SPECIMEN OF A FLORA OF CANADA. 167 
on the whole the method of Lindley, (our greatest English authority 
in respect to Botanical classification,) is to be preferred ; and especially 
that his attempt to characterize alliances or more extended groups, as 
well as Orders, is a great assistance to an intelligent student; I have 
made use of this method, undertaking on my own part to construct a 
series of tables, of a kind which I have long found advantageous, to 
facilitate its application. In the names of the Orders I have uniform- 
ly followed Lindley, discarding such names, however familiar or 
expressive, as Cruciferae, Leguminose, Umbelliferee, Composite, 
and adopting the names ending in acee formed from some well-known 
characteristic genus. I confess to some unwillingness to give up the 
above mentioned names, but the advantages of a uniform system are 
in my estimation too great to be neglected, and require the sacrifice of 
mere habit and prejudice. 
In giving the characters, I have been very particular about the 
language employed, discarding all such terms, however sanctioned by 
good recent authorities, as imply notions of structure which are now 
known to be erroneous. For example: the term monopetalous is 
avoided as implying that the Corolla to which it is attributed really 
consists of a single petal, whilst itis now universally understood to arise 
from the coherence by their edges of several petals which are really 
distinct organs. De Candolle’s term Gamopetalous not seeming to be 
approved, I have used Synpetalous, and instead of Poly-petalous, 
dialypetalous, which very clearly and simply convey the right idea. 
On a similar principle I object strongly to the term pistil, which I 
think should now only be used in its Linnzean sense and in connection 
with the Linnean Artificial System. The inner part of the flower 
which becomes the fruit, (the Gyncecium,) is now well understood 
to consist of a certain number, one or more, leafy organs modified in 
their development, so as to be germ-producing, and furnished with a 
stigma—each of these is a carpel (carpellum.) The differences of 
structure consist in the number of carpels—one, some part of a 
complete circle, or the whole of it, or several circles—distinctly 
arranged or indefinitely crowded, with the carpels distinct or coherent, 
and if the latter, uniting together in several modes and degrees— 
with, or without the adherence upon them of the torus only, or of the 
calyx as well as the torus, with several modifications as to substance, 
membranous, coriaceous, woody, fleshy, or pulpy—and consequent 
differences in the mode of freeing the ripe seeds. These are the 
