-Mae. 31, 1908. The Queensland Natukalist. 13 
it, but many other treaties on Botany and on Floras also. 
This is the case with Sir William Jackson Hooker’s “ British 
Flora,” in the introduction to the 1838 edition of which 
will be found this testimony as to its value : — 
“ In regard to the first object (a description of our 
native plants arranged according to the simplest method), 
the experience of nearly 100 years has proved to every 
unprejudiced mind that no system has appeared (Jussieu’s 
and He Condolies were then extant) which can be com- 
pared to that of the immortal Swede, for the facility which 
enables anyone, hitherto unpracticed in botany, to arrive 
at a knowledge of the genus and species of a plant.” 
Our own esteemed Colonial Botanist, F. M. BaiJey, 
F.L.S., made his first acquaintance with systematic botany 
in the study and application of Linnaeus’ method of arrange- 
ment. The eminent use of his system he discovered thus 
early, and to-day waxes eloquent in descanting on its 
merit's. 
The great Cuvier conqiares such an artificial system 
that enables us to find with ease the names of natural 
objects, to a dictionary, but with this difference, that here 
the characters serve us to find the name, whereas in ordinary 
dictionaries the name serves to acquaint us with the 
characters. 
Linn^tts and Classification According to Method of 
Nature. 
That a sj^stematic arrangement should, howeAmr, 
express Nature herself, and be in fact what is styled a 
“ Natural Method,” it should associate, as wrote Andrien 
de Jussieu, genera that have the greatest number of relations 
with one another ; and, consequently, employ not alone 
certain characters only, but all the characters at once, i.e. 
adopt a reverse process to that of Linnaeus. 
It should, moreover, not only count characters, but 
weigh them, recognising a principle of subordination amongst 
them, in formulating its groups. This was the distinguished 
merit of his worthy parent’s (Antoine Laurent de Jussieu) 
natural arrangement of plant species, to embody. 
The purpose of a natural s^^stem of classification of 
living things is not to serve only as a means for discovering 
the name of an object, but to bring together and distinguish 
those that in the greatest number of respects correspond, 
so as to distinguish the components of a great organic 
whole by a true image, and as this image may be represented 
by a tree and its branches, and can only so be represented, 
to develop, as exhibited in a tree, the order of succession in 
time of the different parts comprised— especially of genera 
and species, or their descent. A classification thus becomes 
