INTRODUCTION TO BOTANY. 
21 
a great change in botany, and who disputed the palm of 
victory with the celebrated Haller. What man, either of 
letters or science, has not heard of Haller? In poetry, 
devotion, anatomy, physiology, botany, literary history, he 
had few equals, perhaps no superior. In respect to botany, 
he was a follower of Ray, upon whom he bestows the 
highest praise, and attempted to render his arrangement 
still more natural than it is, using the simpler method of 
Ruppius as a finder, in consequence of the abstruseness of 
his own system. Unfortunately his labours were confined 
to the plants of Switzerland, while his competitor embraced 
the whole extent of nature, and each edition of his Cata- 
logue was printed upon an expensive scale, in two elegant 
folio volumes, which rendered their circulation very con- 
fined, while his edition of Ruppius did not display the cha- 
racters of the genera : otherwise the superiority of his own 
system, and the easiness of Ruppius’s as an auxiliary, 
would have smothered the Lin mean botany in its birth. 
Hitherto the names of plants had remained nearly sta- 
tionaiy, and if any alteration was attempted the name 
quoted by Caspar Bauhin, in his Pinax, was annexed as the 
common repertory of botanists. The uses also of plants 
had never been neglected. Another point was to use the 
words of the language, whether of the Latin or the vulgar 
tongue, in their usual signification. To these Ray had. 
added a fourth, namely that to excite inquiry, he gave 
lists of such plants as were only imperfectly known to him. 
Linnaeus violated these old rules by degrees, as his sys- 
tematic arrangement of plants became more and more in 
use. He changed the names of plants with the utmost 
unconcern; he neglected almost entirely the detail of the 
uses; and as to the language, he scrupled not to change 
the terms used in describing plants, and to affix new signi- 
fications to well-known words. Another peculiarity in 
Linnaeus’s writings is, that he does not give any lists of 
those natural substances of which he had only an imperfect 
knowledge; so that a person is apt to suppose them more 
perfect than they really are. 
Let it not however be thought, that some very great im- 
provements were not introduced by him, particularly in 
the typographical execution of his works. His taking the 
characters of the families, from the same parts, although 
carried by him to excess, as being extended to the whole 
grand division, now called phenogamous plants, instead of 
being changed in each class according to circumstances, is 
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