410 
NATH It AT. HI8TOHV. 
as tills, it is barely possible to preserve the names of the different 
genera ; fir those who wish to proceed in the science, and to know 
their description, as well as specific differences, we must be cuntent 
with recommending the Systema, Genera, and Species Plantarum 
of Linnaeus, or the Families of the Plants, published by the Lich- 
field Society. Or, for a further introduction to the science (if that 
be necessary) there cannot be a more elegant elementary book, 
than Professor Marty n’s Letters on Botany. 
Vegetables, according to their natural order, are divisible into 
the seven families or tribes following, viz. 
1. FUNGI, Mushrooms 
2. AI.GA5, Flags ; whose root, leaf, and stem are all one. 
3. ML T SCI, Mosses ; whose anther® have no filaments, and are 
placed at a distance from the female flower, and whose seeds also 
want their proper tunic and cotyledons. 
4. FILICES, Ferns ; whose fructification is on the back of the 
frondes. 
5. GRAMINA, Grasses; which have simple leaves, a jointed 
culm or stem, a glumose calyx, and a single seed. 
6. PALMAS, Palms ; which have simple stems that are frondo3e 
at the summit, and have their fructification on a spadix issuing 
from a spatha. 
7. PLANTS, which include all that do not enter into any of the 
other divisions. These are. 
Herbaceous, when they die down to the root every year ; for in 
the perennial kinds, the buds are all produced on the root below 
the surface of the ground. 
Shrubs, when their stems come up without buds. 
And Trees, when their stems come up with buds. 
It is impossible to finish our short review' of nature, without 
observing the wonderful harmony and connection that subsists be- 
tween all the different branches ; without observing how happily 
one part supports another, and how every thing contributes to the 
general good. How infinitely great must be that Eternal Mind 
who framed all with such amazing skill! Who sees, with a single 
glance, the operation and mechanism of the whole, from the 
minute anatomy of the ant, from the almost inconspicuous vegeta- 
tion of the various tribe of mosses, to those innumerable worlds, 
those vast and splendid orbs, that gild the unbounded expanse of the 
universe. 
