BRITISH HERBAL 
RELESRP GORING LEAPED Raa 
C..LA SS... X. 
, 
Plants with the flower compofed of vive vetars regularly difpofed, and the 
feeds contained in @ SINGLE CaPsuLE; and with the leaves alternate, 
or not in pairs, upon the fralks. 
c Bes: plants, if the flowers and feed-veffels alone were to be confidered in the eftablifhment 
of claffés, would have been arranged in the fame with thofe of the preceding; -yet they ‘are 
extremely different from them, The alternate difpofition of the Jeaves’is’an obvious 
character, and is univerfal among them ; as the having them in pairs is of the preceding. 
This may, to a lefs confiderate obferver, appear too trivial an incident for the forming a claffical 
diftinétion ; but nature, whofe fteps alone I follow, fhews “it to be otherwife. “Let him reflect, and 
obferve, that of all the genera treated of in the preceding clafs there is not one which has’ belonging 
to it a fingle fpecies the leaves of which ftand alternately; and that among thofe which  conftitute 
this clafs, the character of which is to have the leaves alternate, there is not one that has a fingle 
fpecies with the leaves in pairs; and he will then find this, which before ‘feemed to him but a 
cafual incident in the growth of the plants, a regular and univerfal law eftablifhed by nature among 
thefe plants, and in all the genera not once violated. : 
He will from this, not only learn the error of his firft opinion, ‘but will’ fee that nature made 
the difpofition of the leaves of plants a certain and regular part of their eftablifhed diftin@ions, and 
that Linneus’s method muft have been imperfect, were “it only for that it has not regarded them 
as any part of claffical diftinétions, The more ftrict and more general marks of ‘divifion are placed 
in larger and more obvious parts of the flower and feed-veflel ; but as there are in the threads, and 
other fmaller parts of it alfo, very remarkable particularities, fo there are in the difpofition of the 
leaves, and the general growth of the plant. 
Thefe laft, as they are the more obvious of the two fubordinate characters, fo they are the moft 
certain, and free from variation. ‘ : 
We find, in many of the particular genera of the preceding clafs, certain fpecies in which the 
number of the threads vary; and this Linnaeus finds himfelf obliged to own, even where he is 
eftablifhing the characters of the genus upon them; but we do not fee any inftance of the leaves being 
placed varioufly in the feveral fpecies of any genus therein. 
This is a point we fhall have occafion to treat more at large when we come to fpeak of the ftellate 
plants; but thus much may be proper to be obferved here, to eftablith the diftin@tion of the prefents 
and prepare for that of the fucceeding clafs. 
Ser eR Bas 
