1840.] 



Wights Illustrations of Indian JBotany. 



S85 



« Of this system I have only further to observe, that the three 

 primary divisions, Acotyledons, MoBocotyledons, and Dicotyledons, are 

 strictly natural, and mast always be retained in every botanical system 

 professing to arrange plants according to their affinities. So much 

 cannot be said for the classes; they rest, with one exception, on a single 

 point of structure, not in itself invariable, in the respective classes ; the 

 insertion, namely, of the stamens and petals, whether hypogynous or 

 perigynous, points not always determinable without the aid of analogy. 

 The secondary divisions, according to which the classes are grouped 

 tinder four sections, are still more artificial and more liable to varj, and 

 thence so much the less to be depended upon. Though to this extent 

 artificial, this method of arranging the almost innumerable forms met 

 with in the vegetable kingdom is, beyond comparison, superior to all 

 that went before it J and though the classes, in which the orders are 

 grouped, be somewhat arbitrary, they are yet so convenient, and gene»= 

 rally so easily distinguishable in practice, as to leave little room to 

 =doubt that the arrangement, as a whole, owes much of its celeWity, and 

 its recent almost universal adoption, to that very blemish. Various 

 attempts have, however, been made to remove that imperfection from 

 this justly admired system, but, so far as I am able to judge, all only 

 serve to show, that, had Jussieu adopted any such arrangement, in place 

 of his own, in the first instance, there is much reason to believe the 

 sexual system, with all its imperfections, would still have reigned pa^ 

 ramount in Botan)', 



" * Jussieu originally prefixed no names to his classes, and the want 

 of this was much objected to. Those which we have given have been 

 lately proposed by Antoine L. de Jussieu in the Diclionnaire des Sci" 

 >ences Naturelles ; and, although not entirely in unisoii with the princi- 

 ples of the Greek language, may be adopted as extremely useful, each 

 being so framed as to suggest the structure of the class. Thus the 

 commencement il/ono, indicates the Monocotyledones, Epistaminem,, 

 &c. having in no part any allusion to a corolla, suggests its absence. 

 iHypocoroll<B, and the others, allude to the corolla being of one piece, 

 and not of distinct petals, which last is pointed out by names, Epipe- 

 ialae, &c. The other parts of the names, epi (upon), peri (around), 

 and hypo (under), need no farther explanation. 



* While engaged in the study of plants alone, it is obviously of 

 little consequence whether we begin, as Jussieu did, by the Acotyle- 

 sdones, or by the Dicotyledones ; but, if we view botany as a science that 

 treats of only one of the great kingdoms of nature, and wish to intro- 

 duce it into a SysiemQ> Natures, we must bring those portions of each 



