Makers of British Botany; a collection of biographies by living botanists

by Unknown

In 1864 Lindley wrote to the late Sir Joseph Hooker to say that he had made up his mind to sell his herbarium and would prefer that the Orchids went to Kew. There it is preserved, a monument of Lindley's skill and industry and of inestimable value to the systematist. Besides the actual specimens it contains coloured drawings of the flowers of all the species that came under his observation in the living state. In addition to the herbarium, Kew possesses a large amount of Lindley's scientific correspondence; letters to W. J. Hooker, 1828-1859 (230), 182 letters to Bentham and 35 to Henslow, and others to which reference has been made already: altogether an invaluable mass of correspondence, selections from which it is to be hoped may some day see the light of publication.

Lindley's skill with brush and pencil may be admired in the many plates which he executed in illustration of his various monographs. His skill with the pen deserves at least remark. Inasmuch however as nearly all the more distinguished of the old school of botanists, Hales, Hooker, Gray, to mention but a few, have in this respect a marked superiority over their successors, it is not necessary to labour the question of literary grace for either the moderns are indifferent on the subject or they may find on every hand models ready for their use. Two citations from the introductory pages of Lindley's classic, The Theory and Practice of Horticulture, must suffice to exemplify his incisive style—Le style c'est l'homme, and Lindley the man hated circumlocution and had no time to waste—"there are, doubtless, many men of cultivated or idle minds who think waiting upon Providence much better than any attempt to improve their condition by the exertion of their reasoning faculties. For such persons books are not written"; and again, with reference to the divorce in current literature between theory and practice, "Horticulture is by these means rendered a very complicated subject, so that none but practical gardeners can hope to pursue it successfully; and like all empirical things, it is degraded into a code of peremptory precepts."

Publications. "The Theory and Practice of Horticulture."

Though many aspects of Lindley's work must perforce be treated of in briefest form no sketch could have the slenderest value which did not take into account his chief works, The Theory and Practice of Horticulture, The Vegetable Kingdom, and the Botanical Register; nor from a survey no matter how brief may reference to his contributions to our knowledge of orchids be omitted.

The value of Lindley's great work on The Theory and Practice of Horticulture may be best gauged by the fact that as a statement of horticultural principles it is the best book extant. Though the botanist of the present day finds on perusing this work that physiological knowledge in 1840 was in a singularly crude state, and may rejoice at the rapid progress of discovery since the time when Lindley's book was written, yet the fact remains that few, if any, men at the present day could make a better statement of the physiological principles underlying practical horticulture than that presented by John Lindley.

Indeed it is a strange fact, and one worthy of the attention of our physiologists, that the gardeners are still endeavouring to puzzle out for themselves the reasons for their practices unaided by the physiologists. An interesting illustration of this assertion may be found in recent issues of the Gardeners' Chronicle containing correspondence from many of the leading growers on the principles underlying the cultivation of the vine. No physiological Philip has come as yet to their assistance! Lindley's book had at once a great vogue on the Continent and was translated into most European languages—Russian included; but it was not till its title was changed from The Theory ... to The Theory and Practice ... of Horticulture that his incorrigible fellow-countrymen, as shy of theory as a fox-glove is of chalk, consented to buy it to any considerable extent.

It was doubtless due not only to Lindley's general services to horticulture but also to the special service which he rendered to that science by the publication of this work that led Lord Wrottesley, President of the Royal Society, to say, when presenting Lindley with the Royal Medal, that "he had raised horticulture from the condition of an empirical art to that of a developed science."

"The Vegetable Kingdom" and "The Botanical Register."

That John Lindley was a man of fine judgment is indicated by his own verdict that, except for The Vegetable Kingdom, The Theory and Practice of Horticulture was his best book. That verdict is sustained by posterity, as Mr Botting Hemsley declares of the former work,—"This grand book must be classed as Lindley's masterpiece. No similar English work was in existence in 1846 when the first edition appeared, nor was there in any language so encyclopaedic a work. Even now it is a valuable book in a small botanical library as it is a mine of information on points that are unchangeable. The work, as set forth in the preface, originated in a desire on the part of the author to make his countrymen acquainted with the progress of Systematical Botany abroad during the previous quarter of a century." Both in his books and in his lectures he adopted the natural system of classification and did much to popularise it though, as previously stated, his contemporaries Robert Brown, the Hookers, and G. Bentham were equally powerful adherents of the new system. To quote the picturesque if somewhat immoderate language of Reichenbach "for a long time the youthful interloper found no favour on account of his having introduced in conjunction Scot Brown, Gray and the still youthful Hooker the natural system of the hated Frenchman; where the more numerous disciples of Linnæus had thought to pass their lives in the glory of pondering and admiring the great Swede." That Lindley was an early convert to this innovation is also proved by the fact that his inaugural lecture at University College startled many by its frank and thorough expression of the superficial character of the artificial system of classifying plants.

The third and last edition of The Vegetable Kingdom consists of about 1000 pages in small type with upwards of 500 illustrations. It contains an historical review of the various "Natural Systems" which had been prepared, beginning with John Ray's (1703) and ending with his own, which is used in the work. In this system Lindley divided plants into seven classes:—Thallogens, Acrogens, Rhizogens, Endogens, Dictyogens, Gymnogens and Exogens, and each class was subdivided into alliances or groups of Natural Orders to which he gave names of uniform termination, as Algales, Filicales, Glumales, Malvales, etc. This classification, though ingenious, is defective, as the author himself recognised. Though never adopted by other writers this fact did not prevent Bentham and Hooker from citing Lindley's work frequently in their Genera Plantarum. As Mr Botting Hemsley observes, Lindley, who in all questions of classification was both cautious and modest, seems to have been an evolutionist without knowing it. Thus in the course of discussion on the permanency of species he observes that "all the groups into which plants are thrown are in one sense artificial, in as much as nature recognises no such groups. As the Classes, Natural Orders and Genera of botanists have no real existence in Nature, it follows that they have no fixed limits and consequently it is impossible to define them.... An arrangement then which shall be so absolutely correct an expression of the plan of nature as to justify its being called the Natural System is a chimera."