[122] Ibid. vol. viii.
From what has already been said, the reader will, I trust, see what an extensive and exact knowledge of the vegetable world, and what comprehensive views of affinity, must be requisite in a person who has to modify the natural system so as to make it suited to receive and arrange a great number of new plants, extremely different from the genera on which the arrangement was first formed, as the New Holland genera for the most part were. He will also see how impossible it must be to convey by extract or description any notion of the nature of these modifications: it is enough to say, that they have excited the applause of botanists wherever the science is studied, and that they have induced M. de Humboldt and his fellow-laborers, themselves botanists of the first rank, to dedicate one of their works to him in terms of the strongest admiration.[123] Mr. Brown has also published [410] special disquisitions on parts of the Natural System; as on Jussieu’s Proteaceæ;[124] on the Asclepiadeæ, a natural family of plants which must be separated from Jussieu’s Apocyneæ;[125] and other similar labors.
[123] Roberto Brown, Britanniarum gloriæ atque ornamento, totam Botanices scientiam ingenio mirifico complectenti. &c.
[124] Linn. Tr. vol. x. 1809.
[125] Mem. of Wernerian N. H. Soc. vol. i. 1809.
We have, I think, been led, by our survey of the history of Botany, to this point;—that a Natural Method directs us to the study of Physiology, as the only means by which we can reach the object. This conviction, which in botany comes at the end of a long series of attempts at classification, offers itself at once in the natural history of animals, where the physiological signification of the resemblances and differences is so much more obvious. I shall not, therefore, consider any of these branches of natural history in detail as examples of mere classification. They will come before us, if at all, more properly when we consider the classifications which depend on the functions of organs, and on the corresponding modifications which they necessarily undergo; that is, when we trace the results of Physiology. But before we proceed to sketch the history of that part of our knowledge, there are a few points in the progress of Zoology, understood as a mere classificatory science, which appear to me sufficiently instructive to make it worth our while to dwell upon them.
[2nd Ed.] [Mr. Lindley’s recent work, The Vegetable Kingdom (1846), may be looked upon as containing the best view of the recent history of Systematic Botany. In the Introduction to this work, Mr. Lindley has given an account of various recent works on the subject; as Agardh’s Classes Plantarum (1826); Perleb’s Lehrbuch der Naturgeschichte der Pflanzenreich (1826); Dumortier’s Florula Belgica (1827); Bartling’s Ordines Naturales Plantarum (1830); Hess’s Uebersicht der Phanerogenischen Natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien (1832); Schulz’s Natürliches System des Pflanzenreich’s (1832); Horaninow’s Primæ Lineæ Systematis Naturæ (1834); Fries’s Corpus Florarum provincialium Sueciæ (1835); Martins’s Conspectus Regni Vegetablis secundum Characteres Morphologicos (1835); Sir Edward F. Bromhead’s System, as published in the Edinburgh Journal and other Journals (1836–1840); Endlicher’s Genera Plantarum secundum Ordines Naturales disposita (1836–1840); Perleb’s Clavis Classicum Ordinum et Familiarum (1838); Adolphe Brongniart’s Enumération des Genres de Plantes (1843); Meisner’s Plantarum vascularium Genera secundum Ordines Naturales digesta (1843); Horaninow’s Tetractys Naturæ, seu Systema quinquemembre omnium Naturalium [411] (1843); Adrien de Jussieu’s Cours Elémentaire d’Histoire Naturelle. Botanique (1844).
Mr. Lindley, in this as in all his works, urges strongly the superior value of natural as compared with artificial systems; his principles being, I think, nearly such as I have attempted to establish in the Philosophy of the Sciences, Book viii., Chapter ii. He states that the leading idea which has been kept in view in the compilation of his work is this maxim of Fries: “Singula sphæra (sectio) ideam quandam exponit, indeque ejus character notione simplici optime exprimitur;” and he is hence led to think that the true characters of all natural assemblages are extremely simple.
One of the leading features in Mr. Lindley’s system is that he has thrown the Natural Orders into groups subordinate to the higher divisions of Classes and Sub-classes. He had already attempted this, in imitation of Agardh and Bartling, in his Nixus Plantarum (1838). The groups of Natural Orders were there called Nixus (tendencies); and they were denoted by names ending in ales; but these groups were further subordinated to Cohorts. Thus the first member of the arrangement was Class 1. Exogenæ. Sub-class 1. Polypetalæ. Cohort 1. Albuminosæ. Nixus 1. Ranales. Natural Orders included in this Nixus, Ranunculaceæ, Saraceniceæ, Papaveraceæ, &c. In the Vegetable Kingdom, the groups of Natural Orders are termed Alliances. In this work, the Sub-classes of the Exogens are four: i. Diclinous; ii. Hypogynous; iii. Perigynous; iv. Epigynous; and the Alliances are subordinated to these without the intervention of Cohorts.
Mr. Lindley has also, in this as in other works, given English names for the Natural Orders. Thus for Nymphaceæ, Ranunculaceæ, Tamaricaceæ, Zygophyllaceæ, Eleatrinaceæ, he substitutes Water-Lilies, Crowfoots, Tamarisks, Bean-Capers, and Water-Peppers; for Malvaceæ, Aurantiaceæ, Gentianaceæ, Primulaceæ, Urtiaceæ, Euphorbiaceæ, he employs Mallow-worts, Citron-worts, Gentian-worts, Prim-worts, Nettle-worts, Spurge-worts; and the terms Orchids, Hippurids, Amaryllids, Irids, Typhads, Arads, Cucurbits, are taken as English equivalents for Orchidaceæ, Haloragaceæ, Amaryllidaceæ, Iridaceæ, Typhaceæ, Araceæ, Cucurbitaceæ. All persons who wish success to the study of botany in England must rejoice to see it tend to assume this idiomatic shape.]