8 
PRELIMINARY TREATISE. 
Dr. Lindley perceived, with his usual clearness of intellect, 
that (assuming the natural orders to be correct, or at least 
capable of being so reformed as to become unexceptionable) 
they must be distributed and classed under a succession of 
more satisfactory superior divisions before they could be 
made available for a scientific arrangement. Through his 
ample information concerning the structure and diversity of 
vegetables, I yet hope that he will be able ultimately to put 
together a stable and true system of botany ; and it will be 
enough for me, who have not sufficient knowledge of facts to 
enter into all the details, if I can point out the fundamental 
errors of the existing system, and the mode by which accord- 
ing to my view a better must be constructed. There seem 
to me two radical errors in Professor Lindley’s alliances. I 
do not, however, impute them to him, but to the system, 
which it was perhaps not easy for him to deal with more 
accurately in its present state. The first is, that he attempts 
to place the greater part of vegetables in subdivisions equally 
distant from the point of universal agreement, which is 
artificial in the extreme, and in direct opposition to nature. 
At the first, step he gives us five classes, which in truth are 
formed of a primary, secondary, and tertiary division 
united. He next subdivides the dicotyledonous plants 
into four grades, viz. sub-classes, groups, alliances, and 
orders; the monocotyledonous, being fewer, into three, viz. 
groups, alliances, and orders; the sexless and root-flowering 
into orders only. But the Almighty did not thus restrict 
himself in the affinities of his creation ; he did not make the 
immense variety of vegetables with a limitation that they 
should branch out into five or six or any defined number of 
points of difference from one original archetypal structure. 
There is a point in which all vegetables must agree ; that 
which separates them from the other parts of the creation. 
Some may detach themselves perhaps from the whole mass 
of vegetables by a single peculiar feature; some may separate 
themselves at an early period, and others after a long series 
of previous subdivisions. There is no law that equalizes 
their affinities to each other ; and any system that shall 
pretend to subdivide them by a limited number of grades, 
must be fundamentally false. My second objection is that 
the divisions are inconsistent and contradictory, which is, 
perhaps, a necessary consequence of the first wrong step. 
For instance, Dr. Lindley’s second group of many-petaled 
