146 Neilgherry Plants. 



tion in juxta position, thus, to some extent, virtually admitting the 

 existence of a circular one and its superiority as being the more 

 natural of the two. Necessity, therefore, not choice, constrains its 

 continued employment, rather as providing a convenient kind of 

 cabinet or store-room, in which to store our daily accumulating facts, 

 in an easily accessible form, to have them in readiness for use so 

 soon as a more natural arrangement is discovered, than as affording 

 such an arrangement itself. 



The supporters of the circular method claim for it a higher degree 

 of perfection, that of really furnishing a clue to the Natural System, 

 and apparently with much reason on their side. This method as- 

 sumes that, nature has systematically arranged all her creations in a 

 series of circular groups, each intimately united to others by a com- 

 plex but beautifully simple network of affinities interwoven, if I may 

 so speak, with a similar network of more remote analogies, all of 

 which are found to exist in every perfect circle, and that these circles 

 progressively diminish in magnitude from the highest to the lowest, 

 until we arrive at the last link of the chain, Species. The primary 

 circles are three — Animals, Vegetables and Inorganic matter. Animals 

 being the Typical circle, Vegetables the sub-Typical, and Inanimate 

 matter the Aberrant ; which last is made up of three minor ones, the 

 endless modifications of Earth, Water and Air ; each equally perfect, 

 thus making together a series of five. 



Animals again divide themselves into three lesser groups, viz. 

 Vertebrate Animals — having an internal bony skeleton — Annulose 

 animals (insects, crabs, &c.) having a hard crust, or, as it were, an 

 external skeleton — and Acreta or soft molluscous animals, having 

 neither proper bone nor crust. 



Vegetables in like manner divide themselves into three primary 

 groups, viz. Dicotyledons or Exogens, — plants increasing in size by 

 the addition of layers of new wood to the surface, or from without. 

 Monocotyledons or Endogens, plants increasing in size by additions 

 from within, the arborious forms of which have at first a hard crust, 

 increasing in thickness towards the centre by additions of woody 

 fibre to its interior. And lastly, Acotyledons or Acrogens, flowerless 

 cellular plants. The third or Aberrant group of each of these king- 

 doms is again divisible into three perfect circles. The Acretous 

 circle of animals contains the Acreta proper — the Mollusca or slugs, 

 snails, shell-fish, &c. : and the Radiata or starfish. The Acro- 

 genous circle of vegetables in like manner naturally divides itself 



