BOTANY.
Linnman System of Botany, the principles upon which it is founded, with its application to practice, have all been amply elucidated in the fourth volume of the ENCYCLOP.EDIA BRITANNICA. The reader will there find a general view of this cele brated system, including the generic characters, as well as some of the specific differences, of most plants hitherto discovered, with their qualities and uses. The terminology of Linnaeus is explained ; his argu ments for the existence of sexes in flowers tailed ; his ideas of a natural method of classification, and of its utility in leading to a knowledge of the virtues of plants, are subjoined to a compendious history of Botanical Science.
The writer of the present supplementary article proposes to take a different view of the subject. This study has, within twenty or thirty years past, become so popular, and has been cultivated and considered in so many different ways, that no dry systematic detail of classification or nomenclature is at all ade quate to convey an idea of what Botany, as a philo sophical and practical pursuit, is now become. The different modes in which different nations, or schools, have cultivated this science ; the circumstances which have led some botanists to the investigation of certain subjects more than others ; and the particular success of each ; may prove an amusing and instructive object of contemplation. In this detail, the history of scienti fic Botany will appear under a new aspect, as rather an account of what is doing, than what is accomplished. The more abstruse principles of classification will be canvassed ; and the attention of the student may in cidentally be recalled to such as have been neglected, or not sufficiently understood. The natural and ar tificial methods of classification having been, con trary to the wise intention of the great man who first distinguished them from each other, placed in oppo sition, and set at variance, it becomes necessary to investigate the pretensions of each. The natural method of Linnaeus may thus be compared with his artificial one, and as the competitors of the latter have long ceased to be more than objects of mere curiosity, we shall have occasion to show how much the rivals of the former are indebted to both. In the progiesk of this inquiry, the writer, who has lived and studied among the chief of these botanical polemics, during a great part of their progress, may possibly find an occasional clue for his guidance; which their own works would not supply. No one can more esteem their talents, their zeal, and the personal merits of the greater part, than the author of these pages ; but no one is more independent of theoretical opinions, or less dazzled by their splen dour, even when they do not, as is too often the case, prove adverse to the discovery of truth. Nor
is he less anxious to avoid personal partiality. In corrupton fide= professis, sec amore piquant, d sine edit) dicendus est.
About the end of the seventeenth century, and the beginning of the eighteenth, the necessity of some botanical system, of arrangement as well as nomen clature, by which the cultivators of this pleasing science might understand each other, became every] day more apparent. Nor was there any deficiency of zeal among the leaders and professors of flue science. Systems, and.branches of systems, sprung up over the whole of this ample field, each aspiring to eminence and distinction above its neighbours. Many of these, like the tares that fell by the way side, soon withered for want of root; others, like the herbs impia of the old herbalists, strove to overtop and suite their parents ; and all armed themselves plentifully with thorns of offence, as well as defenee, by which they hoped finally to prevail over theirtn merous competitors. This state of scientific warfare did in the mean while, much promote the actual knowledge of plants, though it prepared the way for a final distribution of the numerous acquisitions, which were daily making, by the more humble, though not less useful, tribe, of collectors and dis coverers. The success of the Linnsean artificial system is not altogether, perhaps, to be attributed to its simplicity and facility ; nor even to the pecu liar attention it commanded, by its connection with the striking phenomenon, brought into view at the same time, of the sexes of plants. The insufficiency, or at least the nearly equal merits, of the many other similar schemes that had been proposed, began to be most strongly felt, just at the time, when the great progress and success of practical botany, rendered the necessity of a popular system most imperious. While the cause of system was pending, some of the greatest cultivators of the science were obliged to have recourse to alphabetical arrangement. This was the case with Dillenius, the man who alone, at the time when Linnteus visited England, was found by him attentive to, or capable of understanding, the sound principles of generic distinction. These he probe. bly understood too well to presume to judge about universal classification. It was the fashion of the time however for every tyro to begin with the latter; and the garden of knowledge was consequently too long encumbered with abortive weeds.