1840.] 



WigMs Illustrations of Indian Botany, 



377 



disperses the darkness. From this hour materials accumulated with 

 unprecedented rapidity, and have continued to do so to such an extent, 

 that the catalogue of known plants which, on the most liberal computa- 

 tion, did not, at Linnaeus' death, exceed 12,000, is now but little if at all 

 short of 100,000 species. To this increase the natural method owes 

 much of its present admirable precision, as, without such a mass of 

 materials, innumerable breaks in the chain of affinities must still have 

 existed, marring both its beauty and usefulness. We may thence I 

 think fairly conclude, that the sexual system of Botany, however de- 

 fective in scientific precision and comprehensiveness of design, was yet 

 of incalculable benefit to the science; the impulse which its beauty and 

 simplicity communicated, calling thousands of enthusiastic votaries 

 into the field, by whose joint labours was collected the vast mass of 

 valuable materials of which the more philosophical natural method 

 was constructed : leaving altogether out of consideration, the justly ad- 

 mired nomenclature and precision of language appropriated to the des- 

 cription of plants introduced by its author — the universally acknow- 

 ledged father of modern Botany— Linnaeus. 



*' Having I trust satisfactorily shown that the essential difference be- 

 tween the two systems lies in the tendency of the one to contract ouc 

 ideas, by attaching an undue value to the knowledge of species, while 

 that of the other is to elevate and expand the mind by imparting a 

 knowledge of and leading to the contemplation of masses, I believe I 

 have said all that can be required in support of my preference of the 

 natural system, and of the propriety of my first determination to publish 

 a flora of this portion of India arranged according to that method. The 

 same reasoning equally establishes the propriety of my entering on the 

 present work, explanatory of the principles of that system, and showing 

 its application to the grouping in masses of the knowledge which has 

 for ages been accumulating us detached observations ; but which, until 

 thus concentrated, was of difficult access, and,when obtained, only appli- 

 cable to the species to which it originally appertained, in place of, as 

 now, by affording so many points of comparison, or known quantities, 

 enabling us to deduce useful applications of hitherto unknown plants, 

 simply on the ground of their structural relationship or affinity in the 

 system of nature to other?, the qualities of which are well known, 



" That many anomalies, nay positive contradictions, occur in our present 

 groups, is undeniable ; but it is equally certain that'many of these are 

 disappearing under the more rigid scrutiny of structural peculiarities, 

 which have often shown, that the most striking departures from the 

 general rule, were (attributable, not to imperfections of the rule itself, 



