76 Introduction to the Natural System, 



single volume, and this volume in English I Let us not, however, be un- 

 derstood to adduce these considei'ations as the only recommendations tlois 

 work possesses : on the contrary. Professor Lindley has enriched it through- 

 out with original views and remarks of the very first moment to the universal 

 interests of botany. 



The natural system is the classification of plants according to the like- 

 ness they bear to each other. This system originated with the first attempt 

 of man to reduce natural history to a science, and was persevered in by a 

 succession of systematists from the earliest periods to those of Lobel, Cas- 

 salpinus, Ray, and the celebrated Tomniefort ; the last of whom wrote in 

 the end of the seventeenth century. " At this time," says Professor 

 Lindley, " the materials of botany had increased so much, that the intro- 

 duction of more precision into arrangement became daily an object of 

 greater importance ; and this led to the contrivance of a plan which should 

 be to botany what the alphabet is to a language, a key by which what is 

 really known of the science might be readily ascertained. With this in 

 view, Rivinus invented, in 1690, a system depending upon the conformation 

 of the corolla; Kamel, in 1693, upon the fruit alone; Magnol, in 1720, on 

 the calyx and corolla; and finally, Linnaeus, in 1731, on variations in the 

 sexual organs. The method of the last author has enjoyed a degree of 

 celebrity which has rarely fallen to the lot of human contrivances, chiefly 

 on account of its clearness and simplicity ; and in its day it undoubtedly 

 effected its full proportion of good. Its author, however, probably * in- 

 tended it as a mere substitute for the natural system, for which he found the 

 world in his day unprepared, to be relinquished as soon as the latter could 

 be settled ; as seem.s obvious from his writings, in which he calls the natural 

 system p)imu77i et ulthnum in botanicis desideratum [the first and last object 

 of botany]. He could scarcely have expected that his artificial method 

 should exist when the science had made sufficient progress to enable 

 botanists to revert to the principles of natural arrangement ; the temporary 

 abandonment of which had been solely caused by the difficulty of defining 

 its groups. This difficulty no longer exists : means of defining natural as- 

 semblages, as certain as those employed for limiting artificial divisions, have 

 been discovered by modern botanists ; and the time has arrived when the 

 ingenious expedients of Linnaeus, which could only be justified by the state 

 of botany when he first entered upon his career, must be finally relin- 

 quished. We now know something of the phenomena of vegetalale life ; 

 by modern improvements in optics, our microscopes are capable of revealing 

 to us the structure of the minutest organs, and the nature of their com- 

 bination ; repeated observations have explained the laws under which the 

 external forms of plants are modified ; and it is upon these considerations 

 that the natural system depends. What, then, should now hinder us from 

 using the powers we possess, and bringing the science to that state in 

 which only it can really be useful and interesting to mankind ? " 



" The principle upon which I understand the natural system of botany 

 to be founded is, that the affinities of plants may be determined by a con- 

 sideration of all the points of resemblance between their various parts, 

 properties, and qualities ; and that thence an arrangement may be deduced 

 in which those species will be placed next each other which have the 

 greatest degree of relationship ; and that consequently the quality or struc- 

 ture of an imperfectly known plant may be determined by those of an- 

 other which is well known. Hence arises its superiority over arbitrary or 

 artificial systems, such as that of Linneeus, in which there is no com- 



* We say certainly, as the Fragments of a Natural Method which Lin- 

 ngeus left behind him sufficiently show. See Smith's Grammar of Botany. 



