'^^^•l THE NATURAL METHOD. 431 



until at the present titoe nearly all the remains of the former vegeta- 

 tion of the globe are readily assigned to their proper place in the gen- 

 eral system adopted by botanists. Within a few years the number of 

 dicotyledonous species has become so large that the attempt to identify 

 them has been eminently successful. By the aid of a set of rules de- 

 duced from the prolonged study of the nervation of leaves the genera 

 of fossil Dicotyledons have been in great part made known. The only 

 prominent question which this increased knowledge has raised in the 

 department of classification has been with reference to the order in 

 which the divisions of Jussieu should stand. It is, however, now gen- 

 erally admitted that the order in which these three divisions of plants 

 appeared was that of Adrien de Jussieu and not that of A. L. de Jus- 

 sieu,2« the Gamopetalae constituting the most recent group of plants 

 developed upon the globe. M. Schimper, while adhering to the old 

 method in this respect for his systematic arrangement of the families, 

 has nevertheless clearly shown that this does not represent the order 

 of nature, and in his review of these groups ^^^ he has arranged them 

 according to the natural method. 



It is thus that after two centuries of floundering in turbid waters the 

 science of paleobotany has at last found itself in condition to take its 

 proper place as a department of botany— the botany of the ancient 

 world— in which, whatever geology may gain.from it, it must rest upon 

 geology as its solid foundation. 



rX. THE NATURAIi METHOD AS INDICATED BY PALEO- 



BOTAmr. 



The aid that the study of fossil plants affords in arriving at a natural 

 classification of living plants is of prime importance, because it sup- 

 plies at first hand the chief object for which all classification legiti- 

 mately exists, viz., a knowledge of how existing forms came into being 

 and why they are what they are. 



Much as we may delight in the discovery of new and beautiful forms, 

 and may admire the objects in our possession as products of nature and 

 pets of our specialties, we must, as investigators of nature, feel a higher 

 interest in the great problems of their origin and development, whose 

 solution in strictly scientific ways constitutes the proper aim of science 

 itself. 



The method by which these problems can be most successfully attacked 

 is the method of classification. Notwithstanding the contempt into which 

 mere "systematists" have latterly fallen, the true scientific method is 

 still and must ever be the systematic method. The real cause for the 

 present disdain of systematists, lies in the mistaken spirit in which 



^*Adrien de.Jussieu. Cours 616mentaire d'histoire natureUe. Botanique. Paris, 

 1840, p. 395. 

 "6Trait6 de Pal. v6g., Tome I, pp. 8^-87 



