ON THE NATURAL ARKANGEMENT. 109 



must, on all occasions, yield to the natural arrangement. We 

 find those passages as well in the Classibus Plantarum, 

 t. 484. and 487. as in the Philosophia Botaniea, § 77. Even 

 in the latter days of his life, he read ingenious lectures re- 

 pecting what he named Ordines naturales^ which lectures 

 have been published by Giseke, at Hamburgh, 1792. These 

 natural orders are formed without any particular bond, and 

 Linnaeus used to compare them with the different sections 

 upon a land chart. According to this idea, we find in Giseke"'s 

 edition such a land chart, where indeed very many regions 

 stand quite insulated, but where also the conterminous boun- 

 daries of many are correctly marked. That the Palms are 

 conterminous, through the genera Cycast Zamia, and Nyssa, 

 with the Ferns, and on the other side with the Hydrocharidese ; 

 that the latter are related through the Juncese with the Ca- 

 lamariae, and Cyperoidae, and on the other side with the 

 Ensatae or Irideae ; that the latter are conterminous with the 

 Orchideae, and these with the Scitamineae ; all this, and a 

 good deal more, is very correctly stated in that chart. 



Even in his artificial system, the putting together of genera^ 

 according to their natural affinities, — a peculiarity of his sys- 

 tem which we have already blamed, — is a proof of his predi- 

 lection for the natural arrangement. 



164. 



Even during the life of Linnaeus, Michael Adanson pro- 

 posed a natural method in his Families des Plantes, Paris 

 1763, which contains an inexhaustible treasure of observations 

 respecting the essential characters of families, and of innu- 

 merable genera. It wants indeed a principle of arrangement, 

 many of the genera are imperfectly constructed, and, with 

 capricious obstinacy, are improperly named ; but the se^ 

 ries of families is for the most part derived from nature. 

 Thus to the Boragineae or Asperifoliae, succeed the Labiatae, 

 then the Verbeneae, the Personatae, the Solaneas, the Jasmineae, 

 the Anagallideae, the Salicarias, the Portulaceae, the Sedeae, 

 the Alsineae, and so forth. Besides, in this arrangement, at- 

 tention is paid to every thing, — even to the finest parts of the 



