200 



MY LIFE 



[Chap. 



All this was so entirely opposed to views I had already 

 formed, that I devoted a large portion of my lecture to the 

 question of classification in general, showed that any classifi- 

 cation, however artificial, was better than none, and that 

 Linnaeus made a great advance when he substituted generic 

 and specific names for the short Latin descriptions of species 

 before used, and by classifying all known plants by means of 

 a few well-marked and easily observed characters. I then 

 showed how and why this classification was only occasionally, 

 and as it were accidentally, a natural one ; that in a vast 

 number of cases it grouped together plants which were 

 essentially unlike each other ; and that for all purposes, except 

 the naming of species, it was both useless and inconvenient. 

 I then showed what the natural system of classification 

 really was, what it aimed at, and the much greater interest 

 it gave to the study of botany. I explained the principles on 

 which the various natural orders were founded, and showed 

 how often they gave us a clue to the properties of large 

 groups of species, and enabled us to detect real affinities under 

 very diverse external forms. 



I concluded by passing in review some of the best marked 

 orders as illustrating these various features. Although 

 crudely written and containing some errors, I still think 

 it would serve as a useful lecture to an audience generally 

 ignorant of the whole subject, such as the young mechanics 

 of a manufacturing town. Its chief interest to me now 

 is, that it shows my early bent towards classification, not 

 the highly elaborate type that seeks to divide and subdivide 

 under different headings with technical names, rendering the 

 whole scheme difficult to comprehend, and being in most 

 cases a hindrance rather than an aid to the learner, but a 

 simple and intelligible classification which recognizes and 

 defines all great natural groups, and does not needlessly 

 multiply them on account of minute technical differences. It 

 has always seemed to me that the natural orders of flower- 

 ing plants afford one of the best, if not the very best, example 

 of such a classification. 



It is this attraction to classification, not as a metaphysically 



