222 Notice of Prof. De Candolle. 



drew his generic characters. From a similar full examination of 

 all the genera of an order, he drew the ordinal characters. This 

 done, he returned to the genera and species, and rejected from the 

 generic what had been sufficiently expressed in the ordinal, and 

 from the specific, what had been distinctly stated in the generic 

 characters. Thus, applying the highest logic to his work, he 

 gave a model both of analytical and synthetical investigation, 

 which has done much to raise botany to the rank which it holds 

 among the sciences, and set an example by which every succeed- 

 ing botanist has profited. 



Besides this general preparation, which involved many years 

 of diligent and methodical labor in his study, he made special 

 preparation which few, up to that time, had attempted. He 

 visited and carefully examined all the herbaria, even at that time 

 immense, of France and England. He noted their contents ; 

 and obtained the cooperation of nearly all the distinguished bota- 

 nists then living. Nor was it with living botanists and with her- 

 baria alone that he had to do. He studied with minute and pa- 

 tient care whatever had been previously written of plants. For 

 evidence of the extent of his investigations, we have only to refer 

 to his history of almost any plant he has described. For Hepa- 

 tica triloba,^ for example, he refers to volume and page, and ac- 

 companying figure, if any, of more than thirty descriptions before 

 the Species Plantarum of Linnaeus ; to fifteen more under the 

 name given in that work ; to six additional ones, under other 

 names ; to five more for the American variety ; and he had be- 

 sides examined six authentic specimens! Thus we have refer- 

 ence to full sixty descriptions and six herbaria for a single plant. 



The first volume of the Systema was finished in Geneva, to 

 which place he had in this busy interval removed, interrupted, it 

 is said, in the midst of his peaceful labors, by the demon of party 

 spirit. It bears the date of October, 1816. It contains only five 

 orders.f A second volume, containing six orders,:]: and finished 

 in the same elaborate manner, appeared in 1821. *§> 



* Vide Reg. Veg. Vol. I, p. 216. 



t Ranunculaceaj, DilleniacesBj Magnoliacese, Anonacese, and Menisperinese. 



X Berberidese, Podophyllese, NymphrEaceaB, Papaveraceas, Fumariacees, and 

 Cruciferse. 



§ A beautiful quarto volume of illustrations of the rarer and more curious plants 

 described in the first volume of the Systema, especially of those in the herbarium 



