CONTRIBUTIONS TO BOTANY. 
129 
to pause before they assent to so sweeping a conclusion, and must 
diminish the reliance that would otherwise be placed in the value 
of their decisions where, as I have shown, they have endeavoured 
to nullify not only good species, but valid genera. Messrs. 
Bentham and Hooker, in their ‘ Genera Plantarum,' do not go 
quite the length of the authors of the ‘ Flora Indica ’ in regard 
to Cissampelos ; but, as might be expected, they indorse their de- 
cision to a great extent; for they recognize only twelve species as 
belonging to tropical America, five African (including those of 
Antizoma in the number), and only another solitary species, 
which, according to their view, is widely distributed over the rest 
of the world, and known to botanists under names which they 
regard only as synonyms of Cissampelos Pareira. However 
convenient this method may be for the easy determination and 
laconic description of plants, it tends to force back the science of 
botany to the state in which it existed in the time of Linnaeus, 
when it was ruled that any diversified number of plants which re- 
sponded to a short diagnosis comprised within twelve words should 
be held to form a single species. If this method were again 
adopted, as now attempted in Cissampelos, it would nullify the 
great aim of modern botanists, who seek for the greatest number 
of differential characters in the determination of each individual; 
and it would restrict us to the employment of two or three leading 
features, in the discrimination of a species, that might perhaps be 
common to a great many different kinds. 
Nothing in the shape of sustainable evidence has been offered 
to prove that the fifty or more described species of this genus are 
descended from Cissampelos Pareira ; it is not an inference drawn 
from facts, but an assumption in direct contradiction to all the 
simple truths which nature discloses. Nevertheless, suppose we 
grant for an instant that, in an immeasurable course of time, 
and under the influence of “ natural selection,” the imagined type 
has undergone the modifications and preserved the varieties of 
form now exhibited, the inference to be drawn from this admis- 
sion is, that, if such modifications be now permanent, each con- 
fined within a limited range of distribution, and we can assign to 
them severally constant and determinable characters, then clearly, 
according to the rules of science, they ought to be considered 
distinct and valid species. In determining different kinds of 
plants the practical botanist should not be guided by any theory 
of the distant “ origin of species,” but should regard them in 
their present forms. Under this conviction I have opposed the 
the doctrine in question, and have diligently attempted to fix cer- 
tain characters to nearly seventy species of Cissampelos. The 
specific characters I shall give are long, but not longer than is 
necessary in the first instance to particularize each species; for it 
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