CHAPTER OF CRITICISM. 
381 
fee long enough to pierce through not only the “ six tough bull-hides ” of Mr. 
Lankester’s shield, hut also the “solid brass” (I mean no sarcasm) of the 
learned professor’s. In fact I should of necessity have to make extracts from 
Dr. Lindley’s botanical works, and comment on the unnecessary severity of 
language he has employed towards the Linncean system and its advocates on 
various occasions, infusing what I consider to be the same unjust, and, I still 
think, unphilosophical spirit into his pupils. Inquiry into the merits of the 
Linnsean system is not once thought of by the modern botanist of a certain 
school, who is taught to despise it as worse than useless. Thus Mr. Lankester, 
in giving a notice of the works published in the present day for the botanical 
student—in which, surely, impartiality required that Linnsean publications, 
written, as he himself says, “ in a pleasing style, calculated to allure to the study 
of Botany,” should not be placed below zero —-huddles a few of them together in 
a sort of postscript, and goes out of his way to intimate that the system of 
Linnasus must be discarded , as “prejudicial to the advancement of the science 
of Botany.” in his more recent paper in The Naturalist (p. 175), Mr. Lan- 
rester still labours to show that the Linnsean system is “ exploded,” and that 
“ its advocates belong to a school whose views are very far behind the advance 
made by the science of Botany.” This style of astounding assertion is only 
exceeded by the great master himself, who, in his Synopsis of the British Flora , 
says :—“ It phe Linnsean system] is repudiated every where by the rising gene- 
ationthat is, I presume, if they learn Botany at the London University; he 
adds that it “ ought to be excluded from all courses of public instruction by every 
governing body in this country.” Then, after all, it does linger somewhere . 
Surely it is not countenanced by the Regius Professor of Botany at Glasgow!* 
But seriously, where is the evidence of the injury that the interests of Botany 
have sustained from the promulgation of the Linnsean system ? Botany has an 
army of votaries now , but Burnett tells us that in his younger days the 
medical student was a laughing-stock to his compeers if he troubled himself 
with Botany. From the moment that the herbarium of Linn^us touched this 
country, it must be obvious to all acquainted with the subject, that the study 
of Botany received an impulse which, by increasing its admirers on all sides, has 
led to its present prosperity. Did Sir James Smith injure the interests of 
Botany when he brought this valuable collection to England ? and has the use 
he made of its stores, in the publication of his English Botany , and his hitherto 
unequalled English Flora, been so injurious to the spread of the science? Are 
we also meekly to admit as a fact, that Sir W. J. Hooker, in disseminating over 
the country three editions of his British Flora , arranged on this “ discarded ” and 
* Sir Wm. Jackson Hooker, L.L.D., &c.—E d. 
VOL. III.—NO. XXII. 3 B 
