LINN^US 327 



and the anomalies of the Linnean system less tolerable. 

 Then the foresight of Linnaeus became evident. At the 

 very time when he was putting forth a system which 

 his admirers supposed to be immortal, he himself looked 

 beyond it to a system constructed on better lines.^ 



If we are inclined to dwell upon the unnatural com- 

 binations of the Linnean system, it may be profitable to 

 remember that De CandoUe's grouping of the natural 

 families, which at a later day seemed almost indispens- 

 able to rapid determination, had faults of the same 

 kind, and that no substitute for De CandoUe's grouping 

 has so far met with general acceptance. Some artificial 

 simplification may long persist in all practical systems 

 of flowering plants. The Linnean method gave present 

 ease at the expense of future improvements. Without 

 condemning it outright, or separating it from all other 

 methods by calling it " artificial," we may admit that 

 Eay's Synopsis and the Linnean Fragments and Bernard 

 de Jussieu's garden at Versailles indicated a better path. 

 This was in substance the declared opinion of Linnaeus 

 himself." 



Linnaeus lectured on his natural orders, and late in 

 life expounded his philosophy of a natural system to a 

 favourite pupil, Giseke, who has left an interesting 

 record of his master's theory of classification. 



Paul Dietrich Giseke On the Natural Orders^ was 

 never seen by Linnaeus, and was not published till 

 fourteen years after his death. It was Giseke's plan 

 to set forth the doctrines of his great master without 



* The sexual system and the Fragments of a Natural Method are both given 

 in the Genera Plantarum (1737) and the Glasses Plantarum (1738) of Linnaeus. 



'"'I have never pretended," he wrote to Haller, "that the method [of the 

 sexual system] was natural." Epist. ad HoUlerum, Vol. I, p. 284. 



' Garoli a Linne Proelectiones in Ordines Naturales Plantarum. E proprio 

 et J. C. Fabrioii manuseripto edidit P. D. Giseke. 8vo. Hamburg, 1792. 



