particulars, and of previous classifications, the learner is dependent upon the teacher more completely, and for a longer time than in other subjects of speculation: he cannot so soon or so easily cast off the aid and influence of the master, to pursue reasonings and hypotheses of his own. Whatever the cause may be, the fact is, that the reputation and authority of Linnæus, in the latter part of his life, were immense. He enjoyed also royal favor, for the King and Queen of Sweden were both fond of natural history. In 1753, Linnæus received from the hand of his sovereign the knighthood of the Polar Star, an honor which had never before been conferred for literary merit; and in 1756, was raised to the rank of Swedish nobility by the title of Von Linné; and this distinction was confirmed by the Diet in 1762. He lived, honored and courted, to the age of seventy-one; and in 1778 was buried in the cathedral of Upsal, with many testimonials of public respect and veneration. De Candolle assigns, as the causes of the successes of the Linnæan system, the specific names,-the characteristic phrase, the fixation of descriptive language,-the distinction of varieties and species,-the extension of the method to all the kingdoms of nature,—and the practice of introducing into it the species most recently discovered. This last course Linnæus constantly pursued; thus making his works the most valuable for matter, as they were the most convenient in form. The general diffusion of his methods over Europe may be dated, perhaps, a few years after 1760, when the tenth and the succeeding editions of the Systema Natura were in circulation, professing to include every species of organized beings. But his pupils and correspondents effected no less than his books, in giving currency to his system. In Germany," it was defended by Ludwig, Gesner, Fabricius. But Haller, whose reputation in physiology was as great as that of Linnæus in methodology, rejected it as too merely artificial. In France, it did not make any rapid or extensive progress: the best French botanists were at this time occupied with the solution of the great problem of the construction of a Natural Method. And though the rhetorician Rousseau charmed, we may suppose, with the elegant precision of the Philosophia Botanica, declared it to be the most philosophical work he had ever read in his life, Buffon and Andanson, describers and philosophers of a more ambitious school, felt a repugnance to the rigorous rules, and limited, but finished, undertakings of the Swedish naturalist. To resist his 20Theor. Elem. p. 40. 21 Sprengel, ii. 244. criticism and his influence, they armed themselves with dislike and contempt. In England the Linnæan system was very favorably received:— perhaps the more favorably, for being a strictly artificial system. For the indefinite and unfinished form which almost inevitably clings to a natural method, appears to be peculiarly distasteful to our countrymen. It might seem as if the suspense and craving which comes with knowledge confessedly incomplete were so disagreeable to them, that they were willing to avoid it, at any rate whatever; either by rejecting system altogether, or by accepting a dogmatical system without reserve. The former has been their course in recent times with regard to Mineralogy; the latter was their proceeding with respect to the Linnæan Botany. It is in this country alone, I believe, that Wernerian and Linnæan Societies have been instituted. Such appellations somewhat remind us of the Aristotelian and Platonic schools of ancient Greece. In the same spirit it was, that the Artificial System was at one time here considered, not as subsidiary and preparatory to the Natural Orders, but as opposed to them. This was much as if the disposition of an army in a review should be considered as inconsistent with another arrangement of it in a battle. When Linnæus visited England in 1736, Sloane, then the patron of natural history in this country, is said to have given him a cool reception, such as was perhaps most natural from an old man to a young innovator; and Dillenius, the Professor at Oxford, did not accept the sexual system. But as Pulteney, the historian of English Botany, says, when his works became known, "the simplicity of the classical characters, the uniformity of the generic notes, all confined to the parts of the fructification, and the precision which marked the specific distinetions, merits so new, soon commanded the assent of the unprejudiced." Perhaps the progress of the introduction of the Linnæan System into England will be best understood from the statement of T. Martyn, who was Professor of Botany in the University of Cambridge, from 1761 to 1825. "About the year 1750," he says," "I was a pupil of the school of our great countryman Ray; but the rich vein of knowledge, the profoundness and precision, which I remarked everywhere in the Philosophia Botanica, (published in 1751,) withdrew me from my first master, and I became a decided convert to that system of botany which has since been generally received. In 1753, the Species "Pref. to Language of Botany, 3rd edit. 1807. Plantarum, which first introduced the specific names, made me a Linnæan completely." In 1763, he introduced the system in his lectures at Cambridge, and these were the first Linnæan lectures in England. Stillingfleet had already, in 1757, and Lee, in 1760, called the attention of English readers to Linnæus. Sir J. Hill, (the king's gardener at Kew,) in his Flora Britannica, published in 1760, had employed the classes and generic characters, but not the nomenclature; but the latter was adopted by Hudson, in 1762, in the Flora Anglica. Two young Swedes, pupils of Linnæus, Dryander and Solander, settled in England, and were in intimate intercourse with the most active naturalists, especially with Sir Joseph Banks, of whom the former was librarian, and the latter a fellow-traveller in Cook's celebrated voyage. James Edward Smith was also one of the most zealous disciples of the Linnæan school; and, after the death of Linnæus, purchased his Herbariums and Collections. It is related," as a curious proof of the high estimation in which Linnæus was held, that when the Swedish government heard of this bargain, they tried, though too late, to prevent these monuments of their countryman's labor and glory being carried from his native land, and even went so far as to send a frigate in pursuit of the ship which conveyed them to England. Smith had, however, the triumph of bringing them home in safety. On his death they were purchased by the Linnæan Society. Such relics serve, as will easily be imagined, not only to warm the reverence of his admirers, but to illustrate his writings: and since they have been in this country, they have been the object of the pilgrimage of many a botanist, from every part of Europe. I have purposely confined myself to the history of the Linnæan system in the cases in which it is most easily applicable, omitting all consideration of more obscure and disputed kinds of vegetables, as ferns, mosses, fungi, lichens, sea-weeds, and the like. The nature and progress of a classificatory science, which it is our main purpose to bring into view, will best be understood by attending, in the first place, to the cases in which such a science has been pursued with the most decided success; and the advances which have been made in the knowledge of the more obscure vegetables, are, in fact, advances in artificial classification, only in as far as they are advances in natural classification, and in physiology. To these subjects we now proceed. 23 * Trapp's Transl. of Stower's Life of Linnæus, p. 314. WE CHAPTER V. PROGRESS TOWARDS A NATURAL SYSTEM OF BOTANY. E have already said, that the formation of a Natural System of classification must result from a comparison of all the resemblances and differences of the things classed; but that, in acting upon this maxim, the naturalist is necessarily either guided by an obscure and instinctive feeling, which is, in fact, an undeveloped recognition of physiological relations, or else acknowledges physiology for his guide, though he is obliged to assume arbitrary rules in order to interpret its indications. Thus all Natural Classification of organized beings, either begins or soon ends in Physiology; and can never advance far without the aid of that science. Still, the progress of the Natural Method in botany went to such a length before it was grounded entirely on the anatomy of plants, that it will be proper, and I hope instructive, to attempt a sketch of it here. As I have already had occasion to remark, the earlier systems of plants were natural; and they only ceased to be so, when it appeared that the problem of constructing a system admitted of a very useful solution, while the problem of devising a natural system remained insoluble. But many botanists did not so easily renounce the highest object of their science. In France, especially, a succession of extraordinary men labored at it with no inconsiderable success: and they were seconded by worthy fellow-laborers in Germany and elsewhere. The precept of taking into account all the parts of plants according to their importance, may be applied according to arbitrary rules. We may, for instance, assume that the fruit is the most important part; or we may make a long list of parts, and look for agreement in the greatest possible number of these, in order to construct our natural orders. The former course was followed by Gartner;' the latter by Adanson. Gærtner's principles, deduced from the dissection of more than a thousand kinds of fruits, exercised, in the sequel, a great and 2 De Fructibus et Seminibus Plantarum. Stuttg. 1788-1791. permanent influence on the formation of natural classes. Adanson's attempt, bold and ingenious, belonged, both in time and character, to a somewhat earlier stage of the subject.' Enthusiastic and laborious beyond belief, but self-confident, and contemptuous of the labors of others, Michael Adanson had collected, during five years spent in Senegal, an enormous mass of knowledge and materials; and had formed plans for the systems which he conceived himself thus empowered to reach, far beyond the strength and the lot of man. In his Families of Plants, however, all agree that his labors were of real value to the science. The method which he followed is thus described by his eloquent and philosophical eulogist. Considering each organ by itself, he formed, by pursuing its various modifications, a system of division, in which he arranged all known species according to that organ alone. Doing the same for another organ, and another, and so for many, he constructed a collection of systems of arrangement, each artificial,-each founded upon one assumed organ. The species which come together in all these systems are, of all, naturally the nearest to each other; those which are separated in a few of the systems, but contiguous in the greatest number, are naturally near to each other, though less near than the former; those which are separated in a greater number, are further removed from each other in nature; and they are the more removed, the fewer are the systems in which they are associated. Thus, by this method, we obtain the means of estimating precisely the degree of natural affinity of all the species which our systems include, independent of a physiological knowledge of the influence of the organs. But the method has, Cuvier adds, the inconvenience of presupposing another kind of knowledge, which, though it belongs only to descriptive natural history, is no less difficult to obtain;-the knowledge, namely, of all species, and of all the organs of each. A single one neglected, may lead to relations the most false; and Adanson himself, in spite of the immense number of his observations, exemplifies this in some instances. We may add, that in the division of the structure into organs, and in the estimation of the gradations of these in each artificial system, there is still room for arbitrary assumption. In the mean time, the two Jussieus had presented to the world a "Natural Method," which produced a stronger impression than the Familles des Plantes, 1763. • Cuvier's Eloge. Cuv. Eloges, tom. i. p. 282. |