360 On the Genealogy of Plants. ‘June, 
in which department chiefly, nearly all the most advanced workers 
in this field have concentrated their efforts. 
In addition to other and greater benefits, this revolution has 
had the effect to relieve the systematists of the odium which 
naturally attaches to the apparently useless labor of classifying 
objects conceived as independent of one another. A dependence 
once established, classification becomes a vital process, and the 
only means of solving the highest of all scientific questions, that 
of the genesis of organic beings. Every fact in morphology or 
physiology, hitherto regarded too much as ends in themselves, 
now becomes an additional link in the chain of evidence which is 
to establish the genealogical history of a plant or an animal. 
Thus classification, formerly regarded as simply a means for the 
more convenient study of living things, becomes the highest a 
object and chief end of biological investigation. , 
It is a matter of common remark that in the sudden advance of 
biological science which has taken place during the last eighteen 
years, it has been left for botany to bring up the rear. Prior to 
1859 it was generally conceded that the. science of plants occu- 
pied a considerably more advanced position than that of animals. 
This was due in the main to the impetus which it received at the 
hands of the Jussieus, who, following up the labors of Tournefort, 
had given to botany its so-called “ Natural System.” 
But the Jussieus understood relationship only in the metaphori- 
cal sense, and maintained the fixity of species, and the system 
they established could not of course satisfy, in all respects, the: 2 
law of genealogical descent. Its worst vice was the weighty 
authority which it acquired, and which became a serious barrier 
to its extension and rectification. But there are other reasons, 
existing in the nature of the two departments of biology, am 
which need not here be stated, that have contributed to permit 
-our study of the vegetable kingdom to be outstripped by that of 
the animal kingdom. There has not, however, been wee : 
deep sense of the inadequacy of the so-called Natural System oF | 
Plants, and in quite receat times its imperfections have become 
too obtrusive to be longer disregarded, even though greatly — 
reduced by the labors of Lindley, DeCandolle, Hooker, Gray 
and others; and an effort has already been commenced, especially : 
on the continent, to subject that system to a thorough criticism, d 
with the aid of the new light which the modern school of biology 
has kindled in all its departments. 
e RE r E a ES S 
