SYSTEMATIC BOTANY. 61 



ledge of plants was meagre, though the ancients made some 

 progress in the science. In 1694, Tournefort published a 

 work in which he indicated 10,146 kinds of plants ; and it 

 was this botanist who first made an attempt at division, by 

 arranging the number mentioned into nearly 700 genera. 

 The great Linnaeus, however, in the eighteenth century, 

 first collated and divided the vegetable kingdom into defined 

 classes. He was the author of scientific nomenclature ; 

 and though in the course of time his system has been 

 superseded by another arrangement, to him belongs the 

 undisputed honour of originating a method by which the 

 study of botany was facilitated and rendered positive. Nor 

 is his renown lessened by his frank admission that the 

 system was merely an artificial and temporary one, pending 

 the time when deeper investigation and riper knowledge 

 would lead to a more natural and perfect system. Though 

 that time has long since passed, the claims of Linnaeus as 

 the greatest botanist of all time, will mainly rest on his 

 successful creation of a botanical classification, replacing 

 the confusion in which he found the science. 



The last arrangement made by Linnaeus gave the following 

 number of known plants : — 5790 dicotyledons, 881 mono- 

 cotyledons, and 623 acotyledons (cryptogams); total, 7294 

 plants, divided into 1239 genera. Passing over Willdenow, 

 Aiton, and other progressive botanists, we find that in 18 19 

 De Candolle defined the number of scientifically known 

 species as 30,000, about a third of which were in cultivation. 

 Louden, in 1839, enumerated 31,731 species, distributed 

 amongst 3732 genera. In 1853, Dr. Lindley gave the 

 number of known plants as 66,432 dicotyledons, 14,000 

 monocotyledons, and 12,480 cryptogams. Bentley, in 1863, 



