310 CLASSIFICATION AND DESCRIPTION 



possession of true flowers implies the formation of seeds, 

 and tlais in turn generally involves an elaborateness of struc- 

 ture in the plant as a whole far greater than is found in 

 cryptogamic plants, which, as we know, lack true flowers 

 and seeds; while among flowering ])lants it constantlj' hap- 

 pens (as the reader has doubtlessly already noticed in such 

 famihar examples as the apple, pear, and quince) that close 

 resemblance in the form of the seed-producing parts of the 

 flower goes with fundamental similarity in all other parts of 

 the plant. 



With all these aflvantages it is no wonder that this re- 

 markable system should have exerted the v.'\<\c influence 

 which it did; but after all it was too artificial to serve per- 

 manently as a final solution of the great problem of sys- 

 tematic botany. Thus, for example, the group with two 

 stamens and one pistil includes such widely' different plants 

 as olive and sage, while sage is kept far removed from other 

 mints because they have four stamens. No one realized more 

 fully than Linnaeus that liis system was at Ix'st but a make- 

 shift, fit onh' to serve the temporary needs of the science 

 until botanists should be more extensively and more thor- 

 oughly acfiuainted with plants than woukl be possible for 

 many years to come; and he regarded his work onh' as a 

 stepping-stone to the final achievement of an adequate clas- 

 sification. 



86. The natural system. As a contribution to the nat- 

 ural system which he firmly believed woukl be <leveloped 

 in course of time, Linnaeus published a series of sixty-seven 

 groups of genera which he called "natural orders." He con- 

 fessed his inability to define these groups by giving characters 

 which would apply to all the genera of an order, and at the 

 same time serve to separate the orders one from another; 

 and left it for future botanists to disco\'t>r how iar the groups 

 he had suggested really express the fundamental resem- 

 blances and differences found in nature. The fuller knowl- 

 edge of later times has largely justified a good share of 

 these groupings; not a few of Linna'us' natural orders are 

 substantially equivalent to families recognized to-day, and 

 have a place in modern classification often under the 



