22 
INTRODUCTION TO BOTANY. 
a great improvement. His distinction of the species being 
formed from characters visible in the plants themselves, 
instead of the place where found, their size compared with 
others, or their use, is a still greater improvement. If we 
compare his manner of printing the synoptic tables of 
the genera, prefixed to each class, with the tables of Ray, 
or Knaut, the superiority of his method will be evident. 
The same superiority exists in the manner of printing the 
few descriptions he has published. By always observing 
the same order in treating of the several parts, breaking 
the description into short paragraphs, and using a different 
type for the leading word of the several divisions of a 
paragraph, the eye of a person accustomed to his works 
glances immediately to the information that is required. 
These real improvements, added to the industry which 
he manifested in publishing the successive improvements 
of his system, and the cheapness of his works, in which 
the expense of figures was avoided, brought his system 
into vogue, particularly in Germany and England, it being 
a striking feature in the national characters of their inha- 
bitants to prefer the works of foreigners to those of their 
countrymen. 
In France, however, although he was followed by many, 
yet the greater national pride prevalent there forbade them 
to discard their own Tournefort to oblivion. Linnaeus had 
pronounced the discovery of the natural arrangement of 
plants, as attempted by Ray, to be nearly hopeless; but the 
French botanists did not so easily despair ; Adanson, Ber- 
nard Jussieu, his nephew Anthony Jussieu the present 
professor at Paris, Lamarcke, and still more lately De 
Candolle, the present professor at Geneva, have again at- 
tempted this task, and have certainly carried it to a degree 
of perfection, as may be seen in this work, in which the 
plants of the British islands are arranged according to the 
latest improvements of these celebrated botanists. 
The authors since Ray may seem, perhaps, to be passed 
over in too rapid a manner ; but when we consider, that 
since his time the uses of vegetables have, been almost en- 
tirely neglected, and that the Linnean school has princi- 
pally supplied us with authors who have new arranged, 
and new named old things; so that they have plunged us 
again into the same chaos, from which we were rescued by 
C. Bauhin in his Pinax, the notice taken of these name- 
setters and rangers, as Hooke would emphatically call 
them, is fully sufficient for their merit. A few demand 
