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ON THE NATURAL SYSTEM IN BOTANY. 



admire and highly respect. Our readers will perceive from the follow- 

 ing extracts from his remarks on the cryptogamic class of Linnaeus, 

 that we have rather under-rated than over-rated our author's merits. 



" The class has been said to be a truly natural one ; but the word natural must here 

 be used in a peculiar sense, for the materials of which it is composed are of the most 

 heterogeneous character. The mushroom has surely no relation with the fern, nor the 

 sea-weeds with the moss, yet they are all cryptogamous. Even of the orders into which 

 the class has been divided, it is, perhaps, too much to say that they are natural. The 

 dorsiferous ferns and the mosses are natural orders in the judgment of the vulgar as 

 well as of the botanists ; but if the latter will maintain that the fungi and algae are 

 natural groups, it is, I should think, at the expense of common sense, which revolts 

 from the decision. These orders have no one character common to all their consti- 

 tuents ; and plants which differ both in their structure, appearance, and mode of pro- 

 pagation, may be bound together by the fancy of botanists, and for their convenience, 

 but they are not the less unnatural on that account. We are apt to deceive ourselves 

 in this. Practice has made us familiar with a certain classification, and at last we find 

 so little difficulty in referring any plant to its order and place, that we persuade our- 

 selves we do so from some real resemblances between the plants, and consequently that 

 there must be something natural in our systems. But were our first attempts remem- 

 bered, how often they were abortive and erroneous, or grounded on guess rather than 

 on an induction, I am confident it would be admitted that our present facility is solely 

 the result of tutorage and practice, by which our associations have been made to run in 

 an artificial channel. The practised botanist at once refers the moulds and the parasitical 

 blights of corn to the mushroom tribe ; but do any others perceive any semblance 

 between mushroom and mould, or is there really anything in their structure to warrant 

 such a collocation 1 So far is this from being the case, that were the latter to grow 

 habitually under water, they would probably be considered as the members of another 

 order/viz. that of the algae ; yet all algae are not aquatic, nor, were it so, has the habitat 

 ever professedly been allowed to influence our decision relative to affinities. Nor will the 

 uninitiated believe that arrangement a natural one, which unites under one head the 

 sea-tangle with its woody stem and fibrous frond, and the green scum which floats on 

 the surface of stagnant fresh water, rootless, stemless, leafless, and scarcely or- 

 ganised. 



" I offer these remarks, not because I disapprove of our present systems — that 

 would be presumptuous in one who has none better to propose, — but because they are 

 invented and adopted by authors who avowedly disdain the aid of artificial methods, 

 and sneer contemptuously at their followers as the bigoted idolaters of Linnaeus, and 

 less wise. The local florist is too humble a character to be the object of these sneers ; 

 and regardless of a censure which there is no danger of encountering, I would gladly 

 avail myself of any method in arranging this work, had it the sole recommendation of 

 conducting the student easily to the names of the objects sought after, and that in 

 preference to any natural system, if the latter were the more difficult of the two. No 

 one will ever study with success or zeal the relations of objects until he knows some- 

 thing of their structure and qualities,- and that method which communicates most 

 easily the competent degree of knowledge for the purpose, is, in my opinion, the most 

 proper for the beginner." — page 3. 



