120 CLASS-BOOK OF BOTANY. 
the celebrated Swede, Karl von Linné (Linneus), in 1751. 
Linneeus proposed to divide all flowering plants into groups 
according to the number and attachment of the stamens, plac- 
ing, for example, all plants which had 1 free stamen in a class 
by themselves, those with 2 forming another class, those with 
3 a third, and so on—24 classes (the 24th being flowerless 
plants) thus including all known plants. This Linnean classi- 
fication, as it was called, was such an immense improvement 
upon those which had preceded it that it was very generally 
adopted, and remained in common use almost to our own day. 
But from the first it must often have appeared to botanists (as, 
indeed, it did to Linneus himself) that the method was, after 
all, a very imperfect and artificial one. et us take an ex- 
ample from our New Zealand flowers, and we shall see that 
this ig so. Thus, the flowers of the common Manuka (Lepto- 
spermum scoparium) are usually hermaphrodite, and have co 
stamens; these would therefore be placed in the Linnean class 
Icosandria (having flowers in which there are 20 or more 
perigynous stamens). But very frequently the Manuka 
bears on the same branch g flowers without any pistil, 
and fruit from the previous year’s flowers, which must 
therefore have been either ¥ or @. Such a plant is there- 
fore polygamous, and should come under the Linnean class 
Polygamia. Here, then, the same species evidently is made 
to belong to two different classes. Numerous other similar 
examples could be advanced, but the one adduced is sufficient 
to show the artificial nature of such a system. 
But if, instead of thus seizing upon any one character as 
our basis of classification, we try to group our plants together 
according to their agreement in the greatest number of charac- 
ters—in other words, if we take the affinities or most apparent 
relationships as our guide—we shall come to form a more or 
less natural scheme of classification. It is quite clear that, if 
all plants now living have descended from one common 
primitive form which existed untold ages ago upon the earth, 
then there is only one truly natural system of classification, 
which will show exactly the real relationship of every kind of 
plant to every other. But our actual knowledge is still so 
fragmentary that we do not know at all well what this 
relationship is, and we therefore only express what little we do 
know in a very imperfect manner, and this is all that our 
present systems amount to. 
We will not attempt to go into all the reasons of our classi- 
fication, or try to estimate the relative values of the different 
characters exhibited by plants, but we may attempt with some 
prospect of success to apply here the knowledge we have 
hitherto been acquiring. Let us commence by taking a 
number of the plants referred to in the first sixteen chapters 
