always held and taught. And though what he executed with regard to this object was but little,12 the distinct manner in which he presented the relations of an artificial and natural method, may justly be looked upon as one of the great improvements which he introduced into the study of his science.

Thus in the Classes Plantarum, (1747,) he speaks of the difficulty of the task of discovering the natural orders, and of the attempts made by others. 'Yet,' he adds, 'I too have laboured at this, have done something, have much still to do, and shall labour at the object as long as I live.' He afterwards proposed sixty-seven orders, as the fragments of a natural method, always professing their imperfection. 13 And in others of his works 14 he lays down some antitheses on the subject after his manner. 'The natural orders

teach us the nature of plants; the artificial orders enable us to recognize plants. The natural orders, without a key, do not constitute a Method; the Method ought to be available without a master.'

That extreme difficulty must attend the formation of a Natural Method, may be seen from the very indefinite nature of the Aphorisms upon this subject which Linnæus has delivered, and which the best botanists of succeeding times have assented to. Such are these; the Natural Orders must be formed by attention, not to one or two, but to all the parts of plants; the same organs are of great importance in regulating the divisions of one part of the system, and of small importance in another part ; 15-the Character does not constitute the Genus, but the Genus the Character; the Character is necessary, not to make the Genus, but to recognize it. The vagueness of these maxims is easily seen; the rule of attending to all the parts, implies, that we are to estimate their relative importance, either by physiological considerations,

12 The natural orders which he proposed are a bare enumeration of genera, and have not been generally followed.

13 Phil. Bot. p. 80.

14 Genera Plantarum, 1764. See Prælect. in Ord. Nat. p. xlviii. 15 Phil. Bot. p. 172.

(and these again lead to arbitrary rules, as, for instance, the superiority of the function of nutrition to that of reproduction,) or by a sort of latent naturalist instinct, which Linnæus in some passages seems to recognize. "The Habit of a plant,' he says,1 16 must be secretly consulted. A practised botanist will distinguish, at the first glance, the plants of different quarters of the globe, and yet will be at a loss to tell by what mark he detects them. There is, I know not what look, sinister, dry, obscure in African plants; superb and elevated, in the Asiatic; smooth and cheerful, in the American; stunted and indurated, in the Alpine.'

Again, the rule that the same parts are of very different value in different Orders, not only leaves us in want of rules or reasons which may enable us to compare the marks of different Orders, but destroys the systematic completeness of the natural arrangement. If some of the Orders be regulated by the flower and others by the fruit, we may have plants, of which the flower would place them in one Order, and the fruit in another. The answer to this difficulty is the maxim already stated;-that no Character makes the Order; and that if a Character do not enable us to recognize the Order, it does not answer its purpose, and ought to be changed for another.

This doctrine, that the Character is to be employed as a servant and not as a master, was a stumblingblock in the way of those disciples who looked only for dogmatical and universal rules. One of Linnæus's pupils, Paul Dietrich Giseke, has given us a very lively account of his own perplexity on having this view propounded to him, and of the way in which he struggled with it. He had complained of the want of intelligible grounds, in the collection of natural orders. given by Linnæus. Linnæus 17 wrote in answer, 'You ask me for the characters of the Natural Orders: I confess I cannot give them.' Such a reply naturally increased Giseke's difficulties. But afterwards, in

16 Phil. Bot. p. 171.

17 Linnæi Prælectiones, Pref. p. xv.

1771, he had the good fortune to spend some time at Upsal; and he narrates a conversation which he held with the great teacher on this subject, and which I think may serve to show the nature of the difficulty; -one by no means easily removed, and by the general reader, not even readily comprehended with distinctness. Giseke began by conceiving that an Order must have that attribute from which its name is derived;– that the Umbellata must have their flower disposed in an umbel. The mighty master' smiled,18 and told him not to look at names, but at nature. 'But' (said the pupil)' what is the use of the name, if it does not mean what it professes to mean?' 'It is of small import' (replied Linnæus) 'what you call the Order, if you take a proper series of plants and give it some name, which is clearly understood to apply to the plants which you have associated. In such cases as

Can

you refer to, I followed the logical rule, of borrowing a name a potiori, from the principal member. you' (he added) 'give me the character of any single Order? Giseke. Surely, the character of the Umbellatæ is, that they have an umbel?' Linnæus. 'Good; but there are plants which have an umbel, and are not of the Umbellatæ.' G. I remember. We must therefore add, that they have two naked seeds.' L. 'Then, Echinophora, which has only one seed, and Eryngium, which has not an umbel, will not be Umbellata; and yet they are of the Order.' G. 'I would place Eryngium among the Aggregate.' L. 'No; both are beyond dispute Umbellatæ. Eryngium has an involucrum, five stamina, two pistils, &c. Try again for your Character.' G. I would transfer such plants to the end of the Order, and make them form the transition to the next Order. Eryngium would connect the Umbellata with the Aggregata. L. 'Ah! my good friend, the Transition from Order to Order is one thing; the Character of an Order is another. The Transitions I could indicate; but a Character of a Natural Order is impossible. I will not give my

18 Subrisit o πavv.'

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easons for the distribution of Natural Orders which have published. You or some other person, after wenty or after fifty years, will discover them, and see hat I was in the right.'

I have given a portion of this curious conversation, in order to show that the attempt to establish Natural Orders leads to convictions which are out of the domain of the systematic grounds on which they profess to proceed. I believe the real state of the case to be, that the systematist, in such instances, is guided by an unformed and undeveloped apprehension of physiological functions. The ideas of the form, number and figure of parts are, in some measure, overshadowed and superseded by the rising perception of organic and vital relations; and the philosopher who aims at a Natural Method, while he is endeavouring merely to explore the apartment in which he had placed himself, that of Arrangement, is led beyond it, to a point where another light begins, though dimly, to be seen; he is brought within the influence of the ideas of Organization and Life.

6

а

The sciences which depend on these ideas will be the subject of our consideration hereafter. But what has been said may perhaps serve to explain the acknowledged and inevitable imperfection of the unphysiological Linnæan attempts towards a natural method. Artificial Classes are,' Linnæus says, substitute for Natural, till Natural are detected.' But we have not yet a Natural Method. 'Nor,' he says, in the conversation above cited, ' can we have a Natural Method; for a Natural Method implies Natural Classes and Orders; and these Orders must have Characters.' And they,' he adds, in another place,19 who, though they cannot obtain a complete Natural Method, arrange plants according to the fragments of such a method, to the rejection of the Artificial, seem to me like persons who pull down a convenient vaulted room, and set about building another, though they cannot turn the vault which is to cover it.'

19 Gen. Plant. in Prælect. p. xii.

How far these considerations deterred other persons from turning their main attention to a natural method, we shall shortly see; but in the mean time, we must complete the history of the Linnæan Reform.

Sect. 6.-Reception and Diffusion of the Linnaan Reform.

We have already seen that Linnæus received, from his own country, honours and emoluments which mark his reputation as established, as early as 1740; and by his publications, his lectures, and his personal communications, he soon drew round him many disciples, whom he impressed strongly with his own doctrines and methods. It would seem that the sciences of classification tend, at least in modern times, more than other sciences, to collect about the chair of the teacher a large body of zealous and obedient pupils; Linnæus and Werner were by far the most powerful heads of schools of any men who appeared in the course of the last century. Perhaps one reason of this is, that in these sciences, consisting of such an enormous multitude of species, of descriptive 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 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 favour, 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 honour 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, honoured and courted, to the age of seventy-one; and in 1778 was buried in the cathedral

own.