PREFACE. Xvii 



equally ignorant of their natural affinities. Wherein, 

 it may be asked, does the practical botanist (to use 

 a modern expression) differ from the village herbal- 

 ist or culler of simples ; unless it be that the latter 

 cannot give so learned a name as the former, to 

 what it may have cost them equal trouble to find ? 

 The advocate of artificial methods will answer, per- 

 haps, that the difference between the above two 

 collectors is, that the one refers species to their gene- 

 ra, whereas the practical skill of the other is confined 

 to species alone. But in reply to this, a question 

 at first arises, namely — whether the notion of ge- 

 nera, as commonly understood by naturalists, be al- 

 together accurate? And then, even though this doubt 

 should be decided in the affirmative, it ought to be 

 recollected that the notion of genera is not pecu- 

 liar to naturalists; but that, on the contrary, the 

 rudest and most uncultivated mind readily perceives 

 it; and indeed, that it must have existed in man 

 ever since he exercised so common a faculty as 

 comparison. When the ancients divided the vege- 

 table kingdom into plants alimentary, medicinal, 

 poisonous, tinctorial, and so forth, the classification 

 was not perhaps very scientific; but a division into 

 genera was thereby as strictly implied, as if the sta- 

 mens and pistils had been taken into consideration. 

 Linnffius, therefore, in his definition of genera, has 

 done nothing more than expressed with precision 



b 



