PREFACE. 
VII 
be able to class each of the many plants whose exact place 
is at present obscure and doubtful. It may then be possi- 
ble that the Natural System may come recommended not 
only as conformable with the order of Nature, but also as 
offering facilities in its application equal to any other. 
Until this be accomplished, we must, in order to facilitate 
the progress of the student, avail ourselves of another sys- 
tem — of that in which the principles of arrangement are 
more obvious and easily apprehended. We have such a 
system in that which bears the name of Linnaeus. In it, 
the course of Nature has not been strictly regarded, and in 
order to simplify, Families have been broken up, and allied 
genera separated and scattered. 
We may indeed define the Natural System as that which, 
taking a philosophic view, attempts an arrangement of the 
members of the Vegetable Kingdom according to the order 
observed in their creation, so far as can be detected by our 
finite understandings : the artificial or Linnaean, as that 
which merely classifies them in such a manner as may be 
most easy for the Botanist to point out or discover the place 
which each species may or ought to occupy in its arrange- 
ment. The student of the Artificial System may be com- 
pared to him, who is satisfied with what knowledge of a 
district he can acquire by traversing the bye-ways and sur- 
veying each portion of a country in detail : the student of the 
Natural System, in addition to this, ascends an elevated 
situation, in order that he may become acquainted with the 
relative bearings, and enjoy the beauty of the landscape as 
a whole. 
In order, therefore, to facilitate the progress of the young 
Student, I shall give at the end of the Natural System, an 
arrangement of the Genera, according to the Linnaean 
Classification. By means of this, when he wishes to find 
out the name and genus of a plant presented to him for the 
first time, he can resort to the Artificial System of arrange- 
