this part of our knowledge, vague and perplexing as it is, we have no exception to our general aphorism, that no real acquisition in science is ever discarded.

The reception of the system of Jussieu in this country was not so ready and cordial as that of Linnæus. As we have already noticed, the two systems were looked upon as rivals. Thus Roscoe, in 1810,13 endeavoured to show that Jussieu's system was not more natural than the Linnæan, and was inferior as an artificial system: but he argues his points as if Jussieu's characters were the grounds of his distribution; which, as we have said, is to mistake the construction of a natural system. In 1803, Salisbury 14 had already assailed the machinery of the system, maintaining that there are no cases of perigynous stamens, as Jussieu assumes; but this he urges with great expressions of respect for the author of the method. And the more profound botanists of England soon showed that they could appreciate and extend the natural method. Robert Brown, who had accompanied Captain Flinders to New Holland in 1801, and who, after examining that country, brought home, in 1805, nearly four thousand species of plants, was the most distinguished example of this. In his preface to the Prodromus Flora Nova Hollandia, he says, that he found himself under the necessity of employing the natural method, as the only way of avoiding serious errour, when he had to deal with so many new genera as occur in New Holland; and that he has, therefore, followed the method of Jussieu; the greater part of whose orders are truly natural, although their arrangement in classes, as is,' he says, 'conceded by their author, no less candid than learned, is often artificial, and, as appears to me, rests on doubtful grounds.'

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

13 Linn. Tr. vol. xi. p. 50.

14 Ibid. vol. viii.

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 fellowlabourers, themselves botanists of the first rank, to dedicate one of their works to him in terms of the strongest admiration.15 Mr. Brown has also published special disquisitions on parts of the Natural System; as on Jussieu's Proteaceae: 16 on the Asclepiadea, a natural family of plants which must be separated from Jussieu's Apocyneæ:17 and other similar labours.

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.

15 Roberto Brown, Britanniarum gloriæ atque ornamento, totam Botanices scientiam ingenio mirifico complectenti, &c.

16 Linn. Tr. vol. x. 1809.

17 Mem. of Wernerian N. H. Soc. vol. i. 1809.

[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 Prima Lineæ Systematis Naturæ (1834); Fries's Corpus Florarum provincialium Suecia (1835); Martins's Conspectus Regni Vegetabilis 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 (18361840); 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 (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 imita

tion of Agardh and Bartling, in his Nixus Plantarum, (1833.) 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 I. EXOGENE. Sub-class I. POLYPETALE. Cohort I. ALBUMINOSE. Nixus 1. Ranales. Natural Orders included in this Nixus, Ranunculaceæ, Saracenice, 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 Nymphacea, Ranunculaceae, Tamaricaceae, Zygo phyllacea, Eleatrinacea, he substitutes Water-Lilies, Crowfoots, Tamarisks, Bean-Capers, and WaterPeppers; for Malvaceae, Aurantiacea, Gentianacea, Primulacea, Urtiacea, Euphorbiacea, he employs Mallow-worts, Citron-worts, Gentian-worts, Primworts, Nettle-worts, Spurge-worts; and the terms Orchids, Hippurids, Amaryllids, Irids, Typhads, Arads, Cucurbits, are taken as English equivalents for Orchidaceae, Haloragaceae, Amaryllidacea, Iridacea, Typhacea, Araceae, Cucurbitacea. All persons who wish success to the study of botany in England must rejoice to see it tend to assume this idiomatic shape.]

THE

CHAPTER VI.

THE PROGRESS OF SYSTEMATIC ZOOLOGY.

HE history of Systematic Botany, as we have presented it, may be considered as a sufficient type of the general order of progression in the sciences of classification. It has appeared, in the survey which we have had to give, that this science, no less than those which we first considered, has been formed by a series of inductive processes, and has, in its history, Epochs at which, by such processes, decided advances were made. The important step in such cases is, the seizing upon some artificial mark which conforms to natural resemblances;-some basis of arrangement and nomenclature by means of which true propositions of considerable generality can be enunciated. advance of other classificatory sciences, as well as botany, must consist of such steps; and their course, like that of botany, must (if we attend only to the real additions made to knowledge,) be gradual and progressive, from the earliest times to the present.

The

To exemplify this continued and constant progression in the whole range of Zoology, would require vast knowledge and great labour; and is, perhaps, the less necessary, after we have dwelt so long on the history of Botany, considered in the same point of view. But there are a few observations respecting Zoology in general which we are led to make in consequence of statements recently promulgated; for these statements seem to represent the history of Zoology as having followed a course very different from that which we have just ascribed to the classificatory sciences in general. It is held by some naturalists, that not only the formation of a systematic classification in Zoology dates as far back as Aristotle; but that his classification is, in many respects, superior to some of the most admired and recent attempts of modern times.