CLASSIFICATION 73 
GHAPLTER. X1it 
CLASSIFICATION AND ORDERS 
LIVING organisms are classified in order that it may be 
possible to get a bird’s-eye view, as it were, of their number 
and extent. There are 120,000 plants known to botanists at 
the present time. If these thousands of plants were not 
grouped together in any way, it would be impossible for a 
botanist, even supposing that he devoted his life to the study 
of botany, to obtain the knowledge he now can have of the 
Vegetable Kingdom. When a botanist finds a plant, or reads 
of one that is not familiar to him, he is able at once to refer 
it to that group of plants which it most nearly resembles, 
and thus without much labour he forms a general idea of the 
structure of the plant, and all he has to do is to note the 
peculiarities in structure or growth of that particular plant. 
It would be quite otherwise, if each of the 120,000 plants had 
to be described and learnt independently of each other. 
Without some system of classification it is impossible to make 
progress in the knowledge of the immense number of forms 
ot life that exist. | 
It must be remembered that a system of classification is 
never final; it must of necessity be more or less arbitrary 
and likely to vary. A plant which is to-day placed in one 
Order may subsequently be moved out of it, owing to the 
advance in the study of botany. , 
Linnean The system of classification drawn out (1725- 
System. = 1730) by the Swedish botanist, Linneus, was 
_ the one most generally used until about the middle of the 
last century. His system, though a great achievement for 
the age in which he lived, is now seen to be more or less 
artificial : he grouped plants together according to the number 
of stamens principally, and other very important resemblances 
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