302 
LINDLEYS VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 
speculation of a few men, with more enthu- 
siasm than sound judgment : and this too was 
the opinion expressed by persons who stood 
at the head of English botany, in the estima- 
tion of many British Naturalists." Speaking 
of what he felt personally, he says, " The 
author had himself severely experienced the 
want of some guide to this branch of natural 
history, and he felt anxious to relieve others 
from the inconvenience which he had encoun- 
tered." Nor was his complaint confined to 
the deficiency of works in the English lan- 
guage only ; for he says, " At that time too, 
there was nothing of foreign origin which 
could be advantageously consulted ; for Bart- 
ling's Ordines had not readied England ; 
Perleb's Lelirbueh was unknown, and both it 
and Agardh's Classes were of too slight a 
texture to be generally useful to any except 
botanists themselves." It does not appear to 
us that a natural system would be objection- 
able ; but the early blunders committed by 
placing plants in the wrong groups, and the 
seeming incongruity of the members of different 
(so called) families, besides the doing and un- 
doing among the early friends of the system, 
created objections among the learned, to say 
nothing of the unlearned students of botany, 
who saw in the then unexplained arrange- 
ment, plants of opposite natures placed in the 
same orders, some of which comprised subjects 
apparently not at all allied, — the only seeming 
affinity being some trifling subordinate feature. 
The reconciling of these differences, or the 
reconstruction of the families, was properly 
the work of an advocate of the system; and 
while we object to the kicking down of the 
ladder by means of which botany attained a 
considerable elevation, we do not deny that a 
well arranged natural system, founded on un- 
erring principles, will be far more comprehen- 
sive. Many popular writers opposed the 
natural system of Jussieu upon very super- 
ficial grounds ; but it was the vagueness of all 
that could be read about it, and of a good deal 
that was taught of it, that raised up so many 
enemies ; nor were the arguments adduced in 
its support at all calculated to create respect 
for it as a sound available system, but there is 
little question that Linnceus and Jussieu were 
at one time party badges, and neither of the 
systems were pursued with half the ardour 
they deserved to be. The natural system of 
Jussieu was denounced by Rennie as an " un- 
natural system," and its faults were pounced 
upon, as if they were necessarily a part of the 
system itself, instead of a misapplication of its 
principles. The plain matter of fact is, that 
Linnseus settled the several claims of all his 
families by the organs of generation. Jussieu 
decided by examining all the points in their 
structure ; the former could not furnish fami- 
lies nor distinctions sufficient for the proper 
placing of all the novelties, and the latter 
could make room for as many families as there 
were plants ; but let Dr. Lindley dispose of 
the thing his own way : — 
" The great obstacle to the adoption of the 
Natural System of Botany in this country was 
the supposed difficulty of mastering its details; 
but of that difficulty it may be observed, in the 
first place, that it is only such as it is always 
necessary to encounter in all branches of 
human knowledge ; and secondly, that it has 
been much exaggerated by persons who have 
written upon the subject without understand- 
ing it. 
" It has been pretended that the characters 
of the Natural classes of plants are not to be 
ascertained without much laborious research ; 
and that not a step can be taken until this 
preliminary difficulty is overcome. But it is 
hardly necessary to say, that in natural history 
many facts which have been originally dis- 
covered by minute and laborious research, are 
subsequently ascertained to be connected with 
other facts of a more obvious nature ; and of 
this Botany offers perhaps the most striking 
proof that can be adduced. One of the first 
questions to be determined by a student of 
Botany, who wishes to inform himself of the 
name, affinities, and uses of a plant, seems to 
be, whether it contains spiral vessels or not, 
because some of the great divisions of the 
vegetable kingdom are characterised by the 
presence or absence of those minute organs. 
It is true that careful observation, and mul- 
tiplied microscopical analyses,* have taught 
Botanists that certain plants have spiral ves- 
sels, and others have none ; but it is not true, 
that in practice so minute and difficult an 
inquiry needs to be instituted, because it has 
also been ascertained that plants which bear 
flowers have spiral vessels, and that such as 
have no flowers are usually destitute of spiral 
vessels, properly so called ; so that the inquiry 
of the student, instead of being directed in the 
first instance to an obscure but highly curious 
microscopical fact, is at once arrested by the 
two most obvious peculiarities of the vegetable 
kingdom. 
" Then, again, among flowering plants two 
great divisions have been formed, the names of 
which, Monocotyledons and Dicotyledons, are 
derived from the former having usually but 
one lobe to the seed, and the latter two, — a 
structure much more difficult to ascertain than 
the presence or absence of spiral vessels. But 
no Botanist would proceed to dissect the seeds 
of a plant for the purpose of determining to 
which of those divisions it belongs, except in 
some very special case. He knows from ex- 
perience that the minute organization of the 
seed corresponds with a peculiar structure of 
