82 ANECDOTES. 



The vegetable reign possessed the greatest charms for Linn^us ; 

 he bestowed upon it the best share of his time and abilities. When 

 he first appeared in the field of science in 1732, Tournef.ort's system 

 of botany derived from the strufture of the inward cover of the 

 ' flower, was every where popular and universally accepted. But during 

 the latter part of its most flourishing epoch, a kind of barbarism was 

 perceived in that system. A great number of new plants having been 

 ' discovered, it so happened that the characters of the inward cover of 

 ' the flower proved insufficient to distinguish one from another with 

 " plainness and regularity. Botanists began, therefore, to have recourse 

 ' to the outward appearance, and to copper-plates, not without preju- 

 * dice to the certainty of the real system. 



" LiNN.Eus soon perceived the error and its real foundation, in the 

 ' want of sufficient and solid characters, which the inward cover of the 

 ' flower could never have procured. He sought, therefore, a safer 

 ' basis for his system, and took at first the outward cover of the flower 

 ' to effecl his purpose. But he found it equally insufficient. He ulti- 

 ' mately examined the Sex of the Plants, which had in some mea- 

 ' sure been already known before him, though never used as a system. 

 ' Upon these enquiries he built his Sexual System, which soon 

 ' met with universal approbation and spread itself throughout Europe. 

 ' That he might render it the more firm and imperishable, he intro- 

 ^ duccd the natural charafters of the genera, which he took from all 

 ' the parts of fruft fication, and from which he obtained a great num- 

 ' bcr of distinctive marks, which will never fail accurately to point 

 ' out the genera. He demonstrated the true principles of a botanical 

 <■ system, introduced a solid, certain and definitive technology, and 

 o " demon- 



