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Pink; the Liliaceae, with six petals, as the Tulip, Narcissus, Hyacinth, Lily; the Papilionacea, which are leguminous plants, the flower of which resembles a butterfly, as Peas and Beans; and finally, the Anomalous, as Violet, Nasturtium, and others.

Though this system was found to be attractive, as depending, in an evident way, on the most conspicuous part of the plant, the flower, it is easy to see that it was much less definite than systems like that of Rivinus, Hermann, and Ray, which were governed by number. But Tournefort succeeded in giving to the characters of genera a degree of rigor never before attained, and abstracted them in a separate form. We have already seen that the reception of botanical Systems has depended much on their arrangement into Genera.

Tournefort's success was also much promoted by the author inserting in his work a figure of a flower and fruit belonging to each genus ; and the figures, drawn by Aubriet, were of great merit. The study of botany was thus rendered easy, for it could be learned by turning over the leaves of a book. In spite of various defects, these advantages gave this writer an ascendancy which lasted, from 1700, when his book appeared, for more than half a century. For though Linnæus began to publish in 1735, his method and his nomenclature were not generally adopted till 1760.

CHAPTER IV.

THE REFORM OF LINNAEUS,

Sect. 1.-Introduction of the Reform.

ALTHOUGH, perhaps, no man of science ever exercised a greater

sway than Linnæus, or had more enthusiastic admirers, the most intelligent botanists always speak of him, not as a great discoverer, but as a judicious and strenuous Reformer. Indeed, in his own lists of botanical writers, he places himself among the "Reformatores ;" and it is apparent that this is the nature of his real claim to admiration ; for the doctrine of the sexes of plants, even if he had been the first to establish it, was a point of botanical physiology, a province of the

science which no one would select as the peculiar field of Linnæus's glory; and the formation of a system of arrangement on the basis of this doctrine, though attended with many advantages, was not an improvement of any higher order than those introduced by Ray and Tournefort. But as a Reformer of the state of Natural History in his time, Linnæus was admirable for his skill, and unparalleled in his success. And we have already seen, in the instance of the reform of mineralogy, as attempted by Mohs and Berzelius, that men of great talents and knowledge may fail in such an undertaking.

It is, however, only by means of the knowledge which he displays, and of the beauty and convenience of the improvements which he proposes, that any one can acquire such an influence as to procure his snggestions to be adopted. And even if original circumstances of birth or position could invest any one with peculiar prerogatives and powers in the republic of science, Karl Linné began his career with no such advantages. His father was a poor curate in Smaland, a province of Sweden; his boyhood was spent in poverty and privation; it was with great difficulty that, at the age of twenty-one, he contrived to subsist at the University of Upsal, whither a strong passion for natural history had urged him. Here, however, he was so far fortunate, that Olaus Rudbeck, the professor of botany, committed to him the care of the Botanic Garden.' The perusal of the works of Vaillant and Patrick Blair suggested to him the idea of an arrangement of plants, formed upon the sexual organs, the stamens and pistils; and of such an arrangement he published a sketch in 1731, at the age of twentyfour.

But we must go forwards a few years in his life, to come to the period to which his most important works belong. University and family quarrels induced him to travel; and, after various changes of scene, he was settled in Holland, as the curator of the splendid botanical garden of George Clifford, an opulent banker. Here it was that he laid the foundation of his future greatness. In the two years of his residence at Harlecamp, he published nine works. The first, the Systema Naturæ, which contained a comprehensive sketch of the whole domain of Natural History, excited general astonishment, by the acuteness of the observations, the happy talent of combination, and the clearness of the systematic views. Such a work could not fail to procure considerable respect for its author. His Hortus Cliffortiana

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Sprengel, ii, 232.

2 Ibid. 234.

and Musa Cliffortiana added to this impression. The weight which he had thus acquired, he proceeded to use for the improvement of botany. His Fundamenta Botanica and Bibliotheca Botanica appeared in 1736; his Critica Botanica and Genera Plantarum in 1737; his Classes Plantarum in 1738; his Species Plantarum was not published till 1753; and all these works appeared in many successive editions, materially modified.

This circulation of his works showed that his labors were producing their effect. His reputation grew; and he was soon enabled to exert a personal, as well as a literary, influence, on students of natural history. He became Botanist Royal, President of the Academy of Sciences at Stockholm, and Professor in the University of Upsal; and this office he held for thirty-six years with unrivalled credit; exercising, by means of his lectures, his constant publications, and his conversation, an extraordinary power over a multitude of zealous naturalists, belonging to every part of the world.

In order to understand more clearly the nature and effect of the reforms introduced by Linnæus into botany, I shall consider them under the four following heads;-Terminology, Nomenclature, Artificial System, and Natural System.

Sect. 2.-Linnæan Reform of Botanical Terminology.

Ir must be recollected that I designate as Terminology, the system of terms employed in the description of objects of natural history; while by Nomenclature, I mean the collection of the names of species. The reform of the descriptive part of botany was one of the tasks first attempted by Linnæus; and his terminology was the instrument by which his other improvements were effected.

Though most readers, probably, entertain, at first, a persuasion that a writer ought to content himself with the use of common words in their common sense, and feel a repugnance to technical terms and arbitrary rules of phraseology, as pedantic and troublesome; it is soon found, by the student of any branch of science that, without technical terms and fixed rules, there can be no certain or progressive knowledge. The loose and infantine grasp of common language cannot hold objects steadily enough for scientific examination, or lift them from one stage of generalization to another. They must be secured by the rigid mechanism of a scientific phraseology. This necessity had been felt in all the sciences, from the earliest periods of their progress. But the

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conviction had never been acted upon so as to produce a distinct and adequate descriptive botanical language. Jung, indeed, had already attempted to give rules and precepts which should answer this purpose; but it was not till the Fundamenta Botanica appeared, that the science could be said to possess a fixed and complete terminology.

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To give an account of such a terminology, is, in fact, to give a description of a dictionary and grammar, and is therefore what cannot here be done in detail. Linnæus's work contains about a thousand terms of which the meaning and application are distinctly explained; and rules are given, by which, in the use of such terms, the botanist may avoid all obscurity, ambiguity, unnecessary prolixity and complexity, and even inelegance and barbarism. Of course the greater part of the words which Linnæus thus recognized had previously existed in botanical writers; and many of them had been defined with technical precision. Thus Jung had already explained what was a composite, what a pinnate leaf; what kind of a bunch of flowers is a spike, a panicle, an umbel, a corymb, respectively. Linnæus extended such distinctions, retaining complete clearness in their separation. Thus, with him, composite leaves are further distinguished as digitate, pinnate, bipinnate, pedate, and so on; pinnate leaves are abruptly so, or with an odd one, or with a tendril; they are pinnate oppositely, alternately, interruptedly, articulately, decursively. Again, the inflorescence, as the mode of assemblage of the flowers is called, may be a tuft (fasciculus), a head (capitulum), a cluster (racemus), a bunch (thyrsus), a panicle, a spike, a catkin (amentum), a corymb, an umbel, a cyme, a whorl (verticillus). And the rules which he gives, though often apparently arbitrary and needless, are found, in practice, to be of great service by their fixity and connexion. By the good fortune of having had a teacher with so much delicacy of taste as Linnæus, in a situation of so much influence, Botany possesses a descriptive language which will long stand as a model for all other subjects.

It may, perhaps, appear to some persons, that such a terminology as we have here described must be enormously cumbrous; and that, since the terms are arbitrarily invested with their meaning, the invention of them requires no knowledge of nature. With respect to the former doubt, we may observe, that technical description is, in reality, the only description which is clearly intelligible; but that technical language cannot be understood without being learnt as any other lan

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Isagoge Phytoscopica, 1679.

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*Sprengel, ii. 28.

guage is learnt; that is, the reader must connect the terms immediately with his own sensations and notions, and not mediately, through a verbal explanation; he must not have to guess their meaning, or to discover it by a separate act of interpretation into more familiar language as often as they occur. The language of botany must be the botanist's most familiar tongue. When the student has thus learnt to think in botanical language, it is no idle distinction to tell him that a bunch of grapes is not a cluster; that is, a thyrsus not a raceme. And the terminology of botany is then felt to be a useful implement, not an oppressive burden. It is only the schoolboy that complains of the irksomeness of his grammar and vocabulary. The accomplished student possesses them without effort or inconvenience.

As to the other question, whether the construction of such a botanical grammar and vocabulary implies an extensive and accurate acquaintance with the facts of nature, no one can doubt who is familiar with any descriptive science. It is true, that a person might construct an arbitrary scheme of distinctions and appellations, with no attention to natural objects; and this is what shallow and self-confident persons often set about doing, in some branch of knowledge with which they are imperfectly acquainted. But the slightest attempt to use such a phraseology leads to confusion; and any continued use of it leads to its demolition. Like a garment which does not fit us, if we attempt to work in it we tear it in pieces.

The formation of a good descriptive language is, in fact, an inductive process of the same kind as those which we have already noticed in the progress of natural history. It requires the discovery of fixed characters, which discovery is to be marked and fixed, like other inductive steps, by appropriate technical terms. The characters must be so far fixed, that the things which they connect must have a more permanent and real association than the things which they leave unconnected. If one bunch of grapes were really a racemus, and another a thyrsus, according to the definition of these terms, this part of the Linnæan language would lose its value; because it would no longer enable us to assert a general proposition with respect to one kind of plants.

Sect. 3.-Linnæan Reform of Botanical Nomenclature.

In the ancient writers each recognized kind of plants had a distinct The establishment of Genera led to the practice of designating

name.

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