BOTANICAL REFORM. 



ftom giving proper attendance to Clif fort's garden, and receiving 

 tae frequent visits of strangers from Leyden and Harlem. 



The Genera Plantanm was the first work of Linn^us, which made 

 its appearance after his return from England, in the beginning of 1737? 

 and in the completion of which he had spent the last months of the 

 preceding year. It was published at Leyden on 384 pages in oftavoo 

 Ke limited in it the charatters of the genera of plants, accord- 

 ing to the number, form, situation and proportion of their generative 

 parts, reftified the names of the genera by those distinflive marks 

 which were always true to nature, and applicable to any system which 

 might have been adopted for the limitation of the classes and orders. 

 Had he not done this, such a change would only have created more 

 confusion and disorder. Having thus applied proper names to the 

 genera, he also began to alter the names of most of the species. Lin- 

 N^us, according to his own assertion, had till then, examined the 

 charafters of near 8000 plants. The labour and extent of such cir- 

 cumstantial researches at such an age as his, deserve reflexion. Upon 

 the whole, he had described in the above work, upwards of 935 

 genera of plants. This number was afterwards augmented by one 

 half in the eleven different editions, with his own and foreign addi- 

 tions. In the same year he published a supplement to it, (Corollarium 

 Generum) in which he described 60 new genera. To this he aiso added 

 a concise view of the sexual system (Methodus Sexualis). Linnaeus, 

 as we had occasion to observe before, had already inserted after his 

 return from Lapland, a concise list of the plants of this extensive Nor- 

 thern region in the transaftions of the royal society of Upsal. In the 

 month of April 1737, a precise description of them appeared at An-^ 



3 sterdam 



