84 THE SOUTH AND ITS SCIENTIFIC SCOPE 
however, forget a remark he made, saying * he was glad I 
paid so much attention to the minute Orders and to Crypto- 
gamic Botany, for in iliem would he found the foundation 
of a truhj natural sijstem.' Now, though I do not put any 
faith in the quinary arrangement, I beUeve that 5 ha'ppens 
to he the number of groups into which mosses most naturally 
divide themselves, and I am convinced of the truth of the 
circular svstem. Fries i first developed it in the Fungi, 
as Brown knows, for he pointed it out to McLeay, who 
wrote a paper on it (Fries's work) ; again Berkeley ^ takes 
it up in the 'Annals,' vol. i, and quotes Montagne^ m 
strong confirmation. Until, however, Lindley took it up 
I do not know any other steps taken towards arranging the 
groups of plants on a fixed plan. Amongst mosses there 
are many beautiful analogies in the groups, but how to 
characterise the genera is quite a puzzle to me. Gymnos- 
tonum must be split up, for there is hardly a genus of 
Acrocarpi to which each of its species is not far more alhed 
than to its congeners in the present arrangement. 
The other drawings are attempts and nothing more, for 
they are the first Lichens I ever drew, and i am no hand at 
1 Elias Fries (1794-1878), a Swedish botanist, successively Professor 
(1834), Director of the Botanic Gardens (1859), and Rector of the University 
(1853)'at Upsala. He was an especial authority on the Cryptogams. 
2 Miles Joseph Berkeley (1803-89), the great mycologist, was directed to 
Natural History by the influence of Henslow at Cambridge, finally devoting 
himself to the Cryptogams and especially to Fungi. In 1828 he first came 
into touch with Sir W. J. Hooker, for whom he described all the fungi in the 
volumes supplementary to The English Flora of J. E. Smith. For half a century 
all the exotic fungi received at Kew passed through his hands, and over 400 
papers on fungi stand under his name, apart from those at which he worked 
in collaboration. His Introduction to Cryptogamic Botany (1857) remained 
for many years the standard book on the subject, Avhile he was one of the 
pioneers of Plant pathology, popularly remembered as the investigator of the 
potato murrain in 1846. ,,,,.,, 
3 Jean Francois Caraille Montagne (1784-1866), botamst, was left fatherless 
very young, entered the French navy at 14, and took part in the expedition to 
Egypt, cfn his return to France in 1802 he studied medicine, and in 1804 
was attached as surgeon to a military hospital at Boulogne. He became chief 
surgeon to Murat's army in 1815 and again in 1819, and in 1830 was head of 
the military hospital at Sedan. He left the army in 1832 and devoted himself 
to the study of cryptogams. Elected to the Academic des Sciences in 1853, 
and to other Societies, and received the cross of the Legion of Honour 1858. 
He contributed many papers to the Archives de Botanique and to the Annales 
des Sciences naturelles, besides working out the Plantae Cellulares for Webb 
and Berthelot's Phytographia Canariensis, Dumcnt d'Urvillc's Voyage au Pole 
Sud, Gay's Historia fisica dc Chile, etc., etc. 
