78 THE HISTORY OF CEEATION. 



each has formed of the objective "form-relationships" of 

 organisms. These form-relationships, however, as the reader 

 has seen, are in reahty the necessaiy result of true hlood 

 relationship. Consequently, every morphologist in promot- 

 ing our knowledge of the natural system, at the same time 

 promotes our knowledge of the pedigree, whether he wishes 

 it or not. The more the natural system deserves its name, 

 and the more firmly it is established upon the concordance 

 of results obtained from the study of comparative anatomy, 

 ontogeny, and palfeontology, the more surely may we con- 

 sider it as the approximate expression of the true pedigTee 

 of the organic world. 



In entering upon the task contemplated in this chapter, 

 the genealogy of the vegetable kingdom, we .shall have, 

 according to this principle, first to glance at the natural 

 system of the vegetable kingdom as it is at present (with 

 more or less important modifications) adopted by most 

 botanists. According to the system generally in vogue, the 

 whole series of vegetable forms is divided into two maiu 

 groups. These main divisions, or sub-kingdoms, are the same 

 as were distinguished more than a century ago by Charles 

 Linnaeus, the founder of systematic natural history, and 

 which he called Crypitogaonia, or secretly-blossoming plants, 

 and Phanerogamia, or openly -flowering plants. The lattei-, 

 Linnaeus, in his artificial system of plants, divided, according 

 to the different number, formation, and combination of the 

 anthers, and also according to the distribution of the sexual 

 organs, into twenty-three different classes, and then added 

 the Cryptogamia to these as the twenty-fourth and last 

 class. 



The Cryptogamia, the secretly -blossoming or flowerless 



