148 Neilgherry Plants. 



such is the impression conveyed to my mind by their examination. 

 The first series of analogies between the two kingdoms is however 

 known, and when botanists have succeeded in tracing the second, it 

 seems probable the subsequent ones will prove less difficult, as the 

 mass of knowledge of vegetable structure and function already ac- 

 quired, but hitherto only sparingly applied to such purposes, will 

 supply many new elements, well adapted for forwarding the work of 

 systematic arrangement. Jussieu founded his secondary divisions, 

 in the Exogens, on the absence or presence of petals, and on their 

 being one or more : hence his apetalous, monopetalous, and polypeta- 

 lous groups : and his tertiary ones on the relative position of the 

 ovary to the flower, that is, whether the stamens have an inferior 

 (hypogynous), superior (epigynous), or middle (perigynous) attach- 

 ment. DeCandolle has adopted this method with considerable mo- 

 difications, but I do not think improvements as a natural arrange- 

 ment, though well calculated to facilitate its use in practice. 



Professors Lindley and Endlicher have each constructed arrange- 

 ments of the natural orders, or natural systems of Botany, both very 

 different from each other, and from their apparently more simple, 

 though less natural predecessors. This improvement they seem to 

 have accomplished by the avoidance of what may be called linear 

 characters, which must inevitably, in some part of their course, 

 become constrained and artificial ; causing, like the Adjutant's mea- 

 suring rod, the widest separation of brothers, simply because the one 

 happens to be the tallest, the other the shortest man in his regi- 

 ment. By allowing greater scope or circularity to their divisional 

 characters, they have been enabled to bring together, under the name 

 of alliances or classes, groups of allied orders, which are occasionally 

 widely separated by the procrustive operation of linear characters. 

 But though much has, by these and other similar attempts been ef- 

 fected to improve our arrangements, I still think we are far behind 

 Zoology, through our not having yet discovered in our Exogenous and 

 Endogenous groups, those almost self-evident secondary divisions or 

 circles so clearly marked out by nature in the animal kingdom, and 

 so ably taken advantage of by Zoologists, in working out their ani- 

 mal system. 



To discover these, if they actually exist in nature, appears in the 

 present state of the enquiry, to be the first and grand desideratum to- 

 wards the discovery of the true natural system of plants. In the 

 meantime however, our established orders and genera being for the 



