52 T O R R E Y A , • 



arrangement of the stamens. This was a very practicable system for arranging- 

 genera as a matter of convenience and it dominated the field for somewhat 

 longer than the succeeding half century, although by the end of the eighteenth 

 century the handwriting was on the wall, and in the early part of the nineteenth 

 century the artificial system was generally replaced by the natural system of 

 classification with which we are familiar. 



If the proposal of the binomial system by Linnaeus raised a mild storm 

 among those accustomed to the earlier much more cumbersome system of no- 

 menclature then in vogue, a storm that quickly subsided leaving the binomial 

 svstem universally established and accepted, the proposition to arrange the 

 genera in natural families raised a veritable hurricane among the devotees of 

 botanv accustomed to the simple and convenient Linnaean system. This storm 

 raged for some decades and we of the present age have little conception of it. 



In 1831. John Torrev published his American edition of Lindley's 

 'Tntroduction to the Xatural System of Botany." He states in advertisement: 

 "In France, the natural or philosophical method has for many years past taken 

 the place of the artificial sexual system of Linnaeus, and recently by the 

 labours of Brown. Lindley. Hooker, Greville. and others, it has begun to be 



employed in England and Scotland I at once perceived that a desideratum 



in British and American botany, long felt and lamented, was at length sup- 

 plied. It therefore occurred to me that I could not do a more acceptable service 

 to the friends and cultivators of Botanical Science in the United States, than by 



preparing an American edition for the press forthwith This is an epitome 



of modern philosophical Botany, and will be found highly useful to those who 

 wish to obtain an accurate knowledge of the Xatural Classification , of the 

 \'egetable Kingdom."' 



At this time all botanists in the United States, with the exception of 

 Rafinesque, were professed Linnaeists : there was no other system of classi- 

 fication as far as they were concerned. What happened? Consider Amos Eaton's 

 statement of 1833.^ In speaking of Torrey's edition of Lindley he wrote: 



"Since Dr. Faustus first exhibited his printed 'bibles in the year 1463, 

 no book, probably, has excited such consternation and dismay as Dr. Torrey's 

 edition of Lindley's Introduction to the Natural System of Botany. And to 

 make the horrors of students, as well as of ordinary teachers still more 

 appalling. Dr. Torrey's Catalogue of American Plants at the end of his Lind- 

 lev, was so singularly presented, that it would seem to indicate an awful 

 catastrophe to all previous learning. To relieve all concerned, let me make 

 this pledge: Nothing new is presented either in the text or in the catalogue 

 [i.e.. Eaton's own ^Manual], excepting what ought to have been discovered in 

 this progressive science, since the fifth edition of this Manual was printed ; and 



^ Eaton, A. ^Manual of Botanv for North America, ed. 6. i-vi. 1833. 



