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SYSTEMS OE CLASSIFICATION. 
ARTICLE III. 
COMPARISON OF THE BOTANICAL SYSTEMS OF CLASSIFICATION. 
By the Author of the Domestic Gardeners ’ Manual. 
Systems are essentially useful; the mind wanders in doubt, unless 
it have something definite and well arranged to rest upon. In the 
earlier periods of science, when the light began to dawn, men of 
learning and observation attempted to form arrangements; and great 
praise is due to them as the pioneers to improved science, and for 
having paved the way for more simple and refined modes of classifi¬ 
cation. Tournefort and Ray—are names which will never be forgot¬ 
ten ; but to Linnaeus, the palm of excellence will ever be accorded. 
But the botanical System of the renowned Sweed is artificial; and 
as such, must contain great anomalies and irregularities; for how 
can the mere number, position, and arrangement of the stamens, or 
fertilising organs of a flower, paramountly govern the classification 
of the vegetable families ? Flowers of different plants may contain 
precisely the same number of stamens; yet the structure of the 
flower; the general appearance of the plant, and above all the 
organization and arrangement of the fructiferous organs may be so 
essentially dissimilar, as to preclude the possibility of any existing 
relationship. The System of Linnaeus will ever inspire admiration, 
because it affords facilities to botanical investigators of which, pro¬ 
ceeding systems presented no comparative example. But Linnaeus 
himself prospectively contemplated a natural system, and indeed 
partially constructed one. Witness the grapes, a purely natural or¬ 
der, in the second order of his third class —the umbellatce in the 
second order of the fifth class; the cruciform flowers of the fifteenth, 
and so on. His sole aim, as Dr. Smith observes, is to help any one 
to learn the name and history of an unknown plant in the most easy 
and certain manner, by first determining its class and order, in this 
(the artificial) system; after which, its genus is to be made out by 
comparing the parts of fructification with all the generic characters 
of that order.” (Int. to Bot. chap. 23.) 
A natural system was attempted by the celebrated Jussieus Ber¬ 
nard and Antoine: the Genera Plantarum arranged in natural or¬ 
ders —Dr. Smith described it as “the mostlearned work that has ap¬ 
peared since the Species Plantarum of Linnaeus. Bernard died in 
1777. The defects of this system may be appreciated by the follow¬ 
ing passage, from Smith’s Introduction. —“A student may acquire 
a competent knowledge of natural orders, with very great pleasure to 
