POSTSCRIPT. 
41 
Dr. Lindley separated them by fourteen orders. The palms 
and pandanaceous plants, which the unlearned equally call 
palms, are brought together, though I find the liliaceous 
plants between them, and in that respect I think nature and 
my system appear to work well together. The aquatic frog- 
bits find themselves by system, as if accidentally, next to the 
floating river plants, instead of intruding between Bromelias 
and other epiphytes. The breaking up of the order Haemo- 
doraceae does of itself arrange the disjointed parts where 
their affinities are evident. In the position which I necessarily 
give to Gillesiaceae, it becomes the point of contact between 
the liliaceous plants and those which advance from the 
grasses to meet them, so that it is almost immaterial on which 
side the line of division it is placed, whereas it connects no- 
thing where it now stands. I find therefore the axioms, 
which I have laid down as the basis of the botanical science, 
work more satisfactorily in the detail than I could have anti- 
cipated before their application. 
The circumstance that, working upon different plans, Dr. 
Lindley and I should have come so near to the same juxta- 
position of certain orders as he has adopted in his alliances, 
though to a very different position of the alliances themselves, 
seems very confirmatory of the soundness of his views with 
respect to subordinate affinities, and on the other hand their 
agreement with my systematic arrangement of the whole 
must tend to uphold its propriety. 
The arrangement which I have made is intended to 
enable any person, however little skilled in botany, under- 
standing the terms used, which are explained in the glossary, 
to ascertain easily to what order any monocotyledonous plant 
before him belongs ; but many of the orders are so unsatis- 
factory in their construction, so overlaid with alternatives 
which obstruct the view of their fundamental diversities, 
though the separation may be correct, that I have not the 
means of defining them by as satisfactory a feature as I should 
wish to do, and I can only take the best that has been found, 
or at least asserted, to be invariable. 
W. H. 1836. 
