CLASSIFICATION. 129 
men who have denied the truth of this position, and 
have disdained all systematic arrangement, or even 
the least trace of it. Others again, and indeed the 
greater number, believe that there is no real system. 
of nature, but that there is a chain of being. 
Nature connects the most multifarious bodies by 
their forms, their size, their;colours and their qua- 
lities. Each particular body, each plant has some 
affinity with others.. But who is able to declare the 
order followed by nature? All affinities and natural 
orders are but apparent traces of a natural system. 
By a more accurate investigation, we find those 
boasted aflinities not so great, and the natural or- 
ders not so clear. We endeavour, by systematic 
divisions, to arrange bodies in straight lines; but 
nature forms in the whole an intricate and infinite 
ramification, which we are too short-sighted to per- 
ceive, and too superficial to:fathom. | Perhaps in 
some centuries hence,) when every corner of the 
elobe has ‘been examined, and numerous experi- 
ments have distinguished what is true from what is 
false, we may be’able to judge more soundly of the 
order of nature. 
F 121 
But though a true natural system, has not been 
discovered, it cannot be denied that some plants are 
allied by such very striking resemblances, that they 
may be considered as belonging to natural classes. 
Those resemblances, however, extend but to few 
plants, and there are many wanting to connect one 
natural family with another. These affinities, how- 
he ever, 
