NEW ARRANGEMENT 



OF 



PHANEROGAMOUS PLANTS. 



ON THE NATURAL SYSTEM. 



Analogies between the Animal and the Vegetable Kingdom. 



In making an inquiry into a natural arrangement of any department of organic nature, whether animal or vegetable, the mind cannot well rest satisfied, unless it arrives at a conviction of 

 what it does not consist in, as well as of what it does ;— until the former negative kind of assurance is arrived at, new ideas and propositions will suggest themselves and sometimes lead to the 

 temporary rejection of truths, which further observations finally establish. But for the purpose of arriving at a conviction of what a natural classification does not consist in, we must feel confident 

 that we are well acquainted with the entire of the particulars of the structures which we intend to place in their natural relation to each other ; and no doubt it is for the want of this, that our 

 systematic botanists feel a degree of uncertainty as regards all the arrangements hitherto proposed. It is hoped, therefore, that the new facts brought to light by attention to relative position will 

 supersede some part of the speculation that exists, and also in some degree tend to prevent further diversions from practical truth. 



As the arrangement of the Animal Kingdom in all its principal Divisions is so well established, it becomes interesting to inquire how far divisions on the same principles can be carried out 

 in the Vegetable Kingdom. To this inquiry the reply appears satisfactory, so far as its division into Cryptogams and Phanerogams, and of the latter in Endogens and Exogens ; and these divisions 

 being analogous in principle to those of the Animal Kingdom, i.e., established on obvious characters to which there is no material exception, may so far be considered as unalterably fixed. But, 

 if we attempt to carry this strict principle of division which serves us as a guide in the classification of the Animal Kingdom further, so as to apply it to the divisions of the Class Exogens, it 

 entirely fails in consequence either of the limited extent of, or the numerous exceptions that occur to, any one of the structural characters that may be selected as a diagnostic sign of affinity, so 

 that new principles of classification must be had recourse to which take several characters into consideration, instead of one only, in the same way (to some extent at least) as we recognize a 

 countenance by the peculiar character* produced by a combination of the features. The genus Henriquezia for instance, described by Mr. Bentham in the Trans. Linn. Soc, Vol. XXII, PL 52, 



* This principle accords with that of Cuvier, relative to the few genera of doubtful affinity in the Animal Kingdom, viz., that where affinities are uncertain all characters should be taken into consideration. 



