MEMOIR OF BARON HALLER. 25 
siastic ; and his proximity to the Alps afforded 
him a wide and rich field over which to expatiate. 
Many were his excursions amidst their sublime 
scenery, which were not more agreeable than ne- 
cessary to his health ; and for years he was employed 
in collecting a complete herbarium of the region. 
The fruit of his various excursions was published 
in two volumes folio, in 1742, under the title of 
Enumeratio Stirpium Helveticarum, and the work 
was adorned by a number of superb plates. In the 
preface of this work he gives a topographical de- 
scription of the country ; and remarks that, within 
a narrow compass, the region comprehends the 
plants and insects of Norway and of Italy. To 
make his treatise the more complete, he prefixed 
an historical exposition of all that had been pre- 
viously written concerning the plants of the Alps, 
from the days of Brunfelzius to his own. Being at 
this time the youthful cotemporary of the still youth- 
ful Linmeus, it could not be expected that he would 
follow that system which ere long obtained so wide a 
celebrity. Indeed, in 1736, when Iinnseus was not 
thirty, Haller published at Gottingen a plan for the 
prosecution of botany, in which he recommended 
the natural order. In his work on the Botany of 
the Alps, he chiefly employed as characters, the 
presence or absence of the stamens, of the corolla, 
and of the buds; the number of stamens when 
compared with the petals, and the number of the 
cotyledons, as well as that of the seeds, making 
fifteen classes in all. In the following year he pub- 
