ON THE NATURAL SYSTEM IN BOTANY. 157 



There are few of our readers, we imagine, who are not blinded by 

 theory, that will not agree with these well-put and judicious remarks, 

 applicable as strongly, or even more so, to other parts of what is so 

 preposterously termed the Natural System* of Botany. One of the 

 mischievous results of hunting after this chimsera of a natural system 

 is the endless change of names applied to the same plant, according as 

 botanists are pleased to suppose it belongs to this or that order or genus. 

 In many instances, we meet with about half a dozen or more names 

 given to the same species, an evil which Dr. Johnston has exemplified, 

 and smartly ridiculed, in his account, of what we may call in English, 

 Golden Crow silk (Amphiconium aureum, Sprengel; Byssus aura, 

 Lightfoot; Conferva aurea, Dillwyn; Ceramium aureum. Hook- 

 er ; Ectocarpus aureus, Greville, &c. &c.) 



" A little history of this alga," says Dr. Johnson, " from one having authority in 

 these matters, might afford a useful lesson ; but our attempt will, probably, subject us 

 to the charge of ignorance, or of wilful blindness to the merits of our superiors. The 

 plant was placed by Linnaeus in his genus Byssus, which, we will admit, was made 

 up out of somewhat heterogeneous materials, and could not, of course, be per- 

 mitted to remain unaltered, when the fashion came to have all the members of 

 a genus as like to one another as was Sebastian to Viola. And firstly, then, the 

 subject of our story became a Conferva ; a change of nomenclature which, as the 

 consequence of some little additional acquaintance with its structure, was perhaps not 

 to be found fault with ; but scarcely was the name familiarised to us, until another 

 change was deemed necessary to fit it for its proper place in the natural system. 

 Could any thing be more natural than to arrange a terrestrial, slightly organised, 

 filamentous production, among plants which are natives of the sea, live constantly 

 submerged, and possess a comparatively high and complex structure? Certainly not ; 

 and so our late Conferva was located amongst the Ceramia ! Botany, however, 

 has been said to be a progressive science ; hence, in another year or so, a Ceramium 

 this plant was not, and it figured next as an Ectocarpus. How many months 

 or days it retained this appellation I do not know ; it certainly, in no long space 

 of time, was degraded to a synonym, and the very euphonical Trontepohlia usurped 

 the higher station, too soon, alas ! to be displaced, or perhaps it ousted — for here my 

 learning fails me — the little-less-euphonical Amphiconium. If the reader should ask 

 a reason for my choice of this name, in preference to the others, I might be 

 puzzled for an answer, — "a sad choice led him perplexed ;" and if I have erred 

 it may plead some palliation of the error, to remember, that, if a new name 

 had been invented for the occasion, this little volume might have had a chance 

 of being quoted in future by great botanists and in great books ! But let not 

 the reader suppose, that Amphiconium is the latest alias for this plant; the 

 name was used in a celebrated system of vegetables published in the year 1827, and 



* See some remarkable instances of this in " Alphabet of Botany." pages 115 — 

 118. 



