INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 13 



best qualified to do it justice, it falls into the hands of a class 

 of naturalists, whose ideas seldom rise above species, and who, 

 by what has well been called hair-splitting, tend to bring the 

 study of these into disrepute. 



It will generally be found that botanists who confine their 

 attention to the vegetation of a circumscribed area, take a 

 much more contracted view of the limits of species, than 

 those who extend their investigations over the whole surface 

 of the globe. This is partly, no doubt, owing to the force of 

 bad example; and partly to the fact that the student who 

 takes up the study of the flora of his native country, finds 

 that the species are all tolerably well known, and that no 

 novelty is to be discovered. There is therefore a natural ten- 

 dency to make use of trifling difierences, from the scope which 

 they afford for minute observation and critical disquisition; 

 whilst the more close comparison of the few species which 

 come under his investigation, leads the local botanist to attach 

 undue importance to difierences which the experienced ob- 

 server knows may be safely attributed to local circumstances. 

 To this tendency there can be no limit, when the philosophy 

 of system is not understood; the distiuctions which appeared 

 trifling to botanists a quarter of a century ago, are at the pre- 

 sent day so magnified by this class of observers, that they 

 constantly discover novelties in regions which have been tho- 

 roughly well explored; considering as such, forms with which 

 our predecessors were well acquainted, and which they rightly 

 regarded as varieties*. 



Another result of the depreciated state of systematic bo- 

 tany is, that intelligent students, beiug repelled by the pueri- 

 lities which they everywhere encounter, and which impede 

 their progress, turn their attention to physiology before they 

 have acquired even the rudiments of classification, or an ele- 

 mentary practical acquaintance with the characters of the na- 



* Many of the species which have been revived in modem times, were indi- 

 cated by Haller, Ray, Tom-nefort, and other ancient botanists, but were reduced 

 to the rank of varieties, when the science was reformed by Linneeus. 



