I here pass over Jung’s improvements of botanical language, and speak only of those which he is asserted to have suggested in the arrangement of plants. He examines, says Sprengel,76 the value of characters of species, which, he holds, must not be taken from the thorns, nor from color, taste, smell, medicinal effects, time and place of blossoming. He shows, in numerous examples, what plants must be separated, though called by a common name, and what most be united, though their names are several.
I do not see in this much that interferes with the originality of Ray’s method,77 of which, in consequence of the importance ascribed to it by Cuvier, as we have already seen, I shall give an account, following that great naturalist.78 I confine myself to the ordinary plants, and omit the more obscure vegetables, as mushrooms, mosses, ferns, and the like.
Such plants are composite or simple. The composite flowers are those which contain many florets in the same calyx.79 These are subdivided according as they are composed altogether of complete florets, 385 or of half florets, or of a centre of complete florets, surrounded by a circumference or ray of demi-florets. Such are the divisions of the corymbiferæ, or compositæ.
In the simple flowers, the seeds are naked, or in a pericarp. Those with naked seeds are arranged according to the number of the seeds, which may be one, two, three, four, or more. If there is only one, no subdivision is requisite: if there are two, Ray makes a subdivision, according as the flower has five petals, or a continuous corolla. Here we come to several natural families. Thus, the flowers with two seeds and five petals are the Umbelliferous plants; the monopetalous flowers with two seeds are the Stellatæ. He founds the division of four-seeded flowers on the circumstance of the leaves being opposite, or alternate; and thus again, we have the natural families of Asperifoliæ, as Echium, &c., which have the leaves alternate, and the Verticillatæ, as Salvia, in which the leaves are opposite. When the flower has more than four seeds, he makes no subdivision.
So much for simple flowers with naked seeds. In those where the seeds are surrounded by a pericarp, or fruit, this fruit is large, soft, and fleshy, and the plants are pomiferous; or it is small and juicy, and the fruit is a berry, as a Gooseberry.
If the fruit is not juicy, but dry, it is multiple or simple. If it be simple, we have the leguminose plants. If it be multiple, the form of the flower is to be attended to. The flower may be monopetalous, or tetrapetalous, or pentapetalous, or with still more divisions. The monopetalous may be regular or irregular; so may the tetrapetalous. The regular tetrapetalous flowers are, for example, the Cruciferæ, as Stock and Cauliflower; the irregular, are the papilionaceous plants, Peas, Beans, and Vetches; and thus we again come to natural families. The remaining plants are divided in the same way, into those with imperfect, and those with perfect, flowers. Those with imperfect flowers are the Grasses, the Rushes (Junci), and the like; among those with perfect flowers, are the Palmaceæ, and the Liliaceæ.
We see that the division of plants is complete as a system; all flowers must belong to one or other of the divisions. Fully to explain the characters and further subdivisions of these families, would be to write a treatise on botany; but it is easily seen that they exhaust the subject as far as they go.
Thus Ray constructed his system partly on the fruit and partly on the flower; or more properly, according to the expression of Linnæus, 386 comparing his earlier with his later system, he began by being a fructicist, and ended by being a corollist.80 ~Additional material in the 3rd edition.~
As we have said, a number of systems of arrangement of plants were published about this time, some founded on the fruit, some on the corolla, some on the calyx, and these employed in various ways. Rivinus81 (whose real name was Bachman,) classified by the flower alone; instead of combining it with the fruit, as Ray had done.82 He had the further merit of being the first who rejected the old division, of woody and herbaceous plants; a division which, though at variance with any system founded upon the structure of the plants was employed even by Tournefort, and only finally expelled by Linnæus.
It would throw little light upon the history of botany, especially for our purpose, to dwell on the peculiarities of these transitory systems. Linnæus,83 after his manner, has given a classification of them. Rivinus, as we have just seen, was a corollist, according to the regularity and number of the petals; Hermann was a fructicist. Christopher Knaut84 adopted the system of Ray, but inverted the order of its parts; Christian Knaut did nearly the same with regard to that of Rivinus, taking number before regularity in the flower.85
Of the systems which prevailed previous to that of Linnæus, Tournefort’s was by far the most generally accepted. Joseph Pitton de Tournefort was of a noble family in Provence, and was appointed professor at the Jardin du Roi in 1683. His well-known travels in the Levant are interesting on other subjects, as well as botany. His Institutio Rei Herbariæ, published in 1700, contains his method, which is that of a corollist. He is guided by the regularity or irregularity of the flowers, by their form, and by the situation of the receptacle of the seeds below the calyx, or within it. Thus his classes are—those in which the flowers are campaniform, or bell-shaped; those in which they are infundibuliform, or funnel-shaped, as Tobacco; then the irregular flowers, as the Personatæ, which resemble an ancient mask; the Labiatæ, with their two lips; the Cruciform; the Rosaceæ, with flowers like a rose; the Umbelliferæ; the Caryophylleæ, as the 387 Pink; the Liliaceæ, with six petals, as the Tulip, Narcissus, Hyacinth, Lily; the Papilionaceæ, 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.
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 388 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 suggestions 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.86 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 twenty-four.
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 was87 that he laid the foundation of his future greatness. In the two years of his residence at Hartecamp, 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 389 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.
It 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 390 conviction had never been acted upon so as to produce a distinct and adequate descriptive botanical language. Jung, indeed,88 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.
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 Jung89 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 391 language 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.
In the ancient writers each recognized kind of plants had a distinct name. The establishment of Genera led to the practice of designating 392 Species by the name of the genus, with the addition of a “phrase” to distinguish the species. These phrases, (expressed in Latin in the ablative case,) were such as not only to mark, but to describe the species, and were intended to contain such features of the plant as were sufficient to distinguish it from others of the same genus. But in this way the designation of a plant often became a long and inconvenient assemblage of words. Thus different kinds of Rose were described as,
And several others. The prolixity of these appellations, their variety in every different author, the insufficiency and confusion of the distinctions which they contained, were felt as extreme inconveniences. The attempt of Bauhin to remedy this evil by a Synonymy, had, as we have seen, failed at the time, for want of any directing principle; and was become still more defective by the lapse of years and the accumulation of fresh knowledge and new books. Haller had proposed to distinguish the species of each genus by the numbers 1, 2, 3, and so on; but botanists found that their memory could not deal with such arbitrary abstractions. The need of some better nomenclature was severely felt.
The remedy which Linnæus finally introduced was the use of trivial names; that is, the designation of each species by the name of the genus along with a single conventional word, imposed without any general rule. Such names are added above in parentheses, to the specimens of the names previously in use. But though this remedy was found to be complete and satisfactory, and is now universally adopted in every branch of natural history, it was not one of the reforms which Linnæus at first proposed. Perhaps he did not at first see its full value; or, if he did, we may suppose that it required more self-confidence than he possessed, to set himself to introduce and establish ten thousand new names in the botanical world. Accordingly, the first attempts of Linnæus at the improvement of the nomenclature of botany were, the proposal of fixed and careful rules for the generic name, and for the descriptive phrase. Thus, in his Critica Botanica, he gives many precepts concerning the selection of the names of 393 genera, intended to secure convenience or elegance. For instance, that they are to be single words;90 he substitutes atropa for bella donna, and leontodon for dens leonis; that they are not to depend upon the name of another genus,91 as acriviola, agrimonoides; that they are not92 to be “sesquipedalia;” and, says he, any word is sesquipedalian to me, which has more than twelve letters, as kalophyllodendron, for which he substitutes calophyllon. Though some of these rules may seem pedantic, there is no doubt that, taken altogether, they tend exceedingly, like the labors of purists in other languages, to exclude extravagance, caprice, and barbarism in botanical speech.
The precepts which he gives for the matter of the “descriptive phrase,” or, as it is termed in the language of the Aristotelian logicians, the “differentia,” are, for the most part, results of the general rule, that the most fixed characters which can be found are to be used; this rule being interpreted according to all the knowledge of plants which had then been acquired. The language of the rules was, of course, to be regulated by the terminology, of which we have already spoken.
Thus, in the Critica Botanica, the name of a plant is considered as consisting of a generic word and a specific phrase; and these are, he says,93 the right and left hands of the plant. But he then speaks of another kind of name; the trivial name, which is opposed to the scientific. Such names were, he says,94 those of his predecessors, and especially of the most ancient of them. Hitherto95 no rules had been given for their use. He manifestly, at this period, has small regard for them. “Yet,” he says, “trivial names may, perhaps, be used on this account,—that the differentia often turns out too long to be convenient in common use, and may require change as new species are discovered. However,” he continues, “in this work we set such names aside altogether, and attend only to the differentiæ.”
Even in the Species Plantarum, the work which gave general currency to these trivial names, he does not seem to have yet dared to propose so great a novelty. They only stand in the margin of the work. “I have placed them there,” he says in his Preface, “that, without circumlocution, we may call every herb by a single name; I have done this without selection, which would require more time. And I beseech all sane botanists to avoid most religiously ever 394 proposing a trivial name without a sufficient specific distinction, lest the science should fall into its former barbarism.”
It cannot be doubted, that the general reception of these trivial names of Linnæus, as the current language among botanists, was due, in a very great degree, to the knowledge, care, and skill with which his characters, both of genera and of species, were constructed. The rigorous rules of selection and expression which are proposed in the Fundamenta Botanica and Critica Botanica, he himself conformed to; and this scrupulosity was employed upon the results of immense labor. “In order that I might make myself acquainted with the species of plants,” he says, in the preface to his work upon them, “I have explored the Alps of Lapland, the whole of Sweden, a part of Norway, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, England, France: I have examined the Botanical Gardens of Paris, Oxford, Chelsea, Hartecamp, Leyden, Utrecht, Amsterdam, Upsal, and others: I have turned over the Herbals of Burser, Hermann, Clifford, Burmann, Oldenland, Gronovius, Royer, Sloane, Sherard, Bobart, Miller, Tournefort, Vaillant, Jussieu, Surian, Beck, Brown, &c.: my dear disciples have gone to distant lands, and sent me plants from thence; Kalm to Canada, Hasselquist to Egypt, Osbeck to China, Toren to Surat, Solander to England, Alstrœmer to Southern Europe, Martin to Spitzbergen, Pontin to Malabar, Kœhler to Italy, Forskähl to the East, Lœfling to Spain, Montin to Lapland: my botanical friends have sent me many seeds and dried plants from various countries: Lagerström many from the East Indies; Gronovius most of the Virginian; Gmelin all the Siberian; Burmann those of the Cape.” And in consistency with this habit of immense collection of materials, is his maxim,96 that “a person is a better botanist in proportion as he knows more species.” It will easily be seen that this maxim, like Newton’s declaration that discovery requires patient thought alone, refers only to the exertions of which the man of genius is conscious; and leaves out of sight his peculiar endowments, which he does not see because they are part of his power of vision. With the taste for symmetry which dictated the Critica Botanica, and the talent for classification which appears in the Genera Plantarum, and the Systema Naturæ, a person must undoubtedly rise to higher steps of classificatory knowledge and skill, as he became acquainted with a greater number of facts.
The acknowledged superiority of Linnæus in the knowledge of the 395 matter of his science, induced other persons to defer to him in what concerned its form; especially when his precepts were, for the most part, recommended strongly both by convenience and elegance. The trivial names of the Species Plantarum were generally received; and though some of the details may have been altered, the immense advantage of the scheme ensures its permanence.
We have already seen, that, from the time of Cæsalpinus, botanists had been endeavoring to frame a systematic arrangement of plants. All such arrangements were necessarily both artificial and natural: they were artificial, inasmuch as they depended upon assumed principles, the number, form, and position of certain parts, by the application of which the whole vegetable kingdom was imperatively subdivided; they were natural, inasmuch as the justification of this division was, that it brought together those plants which were naturally related. No system of arrangement, for instance, would have been tolerated which, in a great proportion of cases, separated into distant parts of the plan the different species of the same genus. As far as the main body of the genera, at least, all systems are natural.
But beginning from this line, we may construct our systems with two opposite purposes, according as we endeavor to carry our assumed principle of division rigorously and consistently through the system, or as we wish to associate natural families of a wider kind than genera. The former propensity leads to an artificial, the latter to a natural method. Each is a System of Plants; but in the first, the emphasis is thrown on the former word of the title, in the other, on the latter.
The strongest recommendation of an artificial system, (besides its approaching to a natural method,) is, that it shall be capable of easy use; for which purpose, the facts on which it depends must be apparent in their relations, and universal in their occurrence. The system of Linnæus, founded upon the number, position, and other circumstances of the stamina and pistils, the reproductive organs of the plants, possessed this merit in an eminent degree, as far as these characters are concerned; that is, as far as the classes and orders. In its further subdivision into genera, its superiority was mainly due to the exact observation and description, which we have already had to notice as talents which Linnæus peculiarly possessed.
The Linnæan system of plants was more definite than that of 396 Tournefort, which was governed by the corolla; for number is more definite than irregular form. It was more readily employed than any of those which depend on the fruit, for the flower is a more obvious object, and more easily examined. Still, it can hardly be doubted, that the circumstance which gave the main currency to the system of Linnæus was its physiological signification: it was the Sexual System. The relation of the parts to which it directed the attention, interested both the philosophical faculty and the imagination. And when, soon after the system had become familiar in our own country, the poet of The Botanic Garden peopled the bell of every flower with “Nymphs” and “Swains,” his imagery was felt to be by no means forced and far-fetched.
The history of the doctrine of the sexes of plants, as a point of physiology, does not belong to this place; and the Linnæan system of classification need not be longer dwelt upon for our present purpose. I will only explain a little further what has been said, that it is, up to a certain point, a natural system. Several of Linnæus’s classes are, in a great measure, natural associations, kept together in violation of his own artificial rules. Thus the class Diadelphia, in which, by the system, the filaments of the stamina should be bound together in two parcels, does, in fact, contain many genera which are monadelphous, the filaments of the stamina all cohering so as to form one bundle only; as in Genista, Spartium, Anthyllis, Lupinus, &c. And why is this violation of rule? Precisely because these genera all belong to the natural tribe of Papilionaceous plants, which the author of the system could not prevail upon himself to tear asunder. Yet in other cases Linnæus was true to his system, to the injury of natural alliances, as he was, for instance, in another portion of this very tribe of Papilionaceæ; for there are plants which undoubtedly belong to the tribe, but which have ten separate stamens; and these he placed in the order Decandria. Upon the whole, however, he inclines rather to admit transgression of art than of nature.
The reason of this inclination was, that he rightly considered an artificial method as instrumental to the investigation of a natural one; and to this part of his views we now proceed.
The admirers of Linnæus, the English especially, were for some time in the habit of putting his Sexual System in opposition to the Natural Method, which about the same time was attempted in France. And 397 as they often appear to have imagined that the ultimate object of botanical methods was to know the name of plants, they naturally preferred the Swedish method, which is excellent as a finder. No person, however, who wishes to know botany as a science, that is, as a body of general truths, can be content with making names his ultimate object. Such a person will be constantly and irresistibly led on to attempt to catch sight of the natural arrangement of plants, even before he discovers, as he will discover by pursuing such a course of study, that the knowledge of the natural arrangement is the knowledge of the essential construction and vital mechanism of plants. He will consider an artificial method as a means of arriving at a natural method. Accordingly, however much some of his followers may have overlooked this, it is what Linnæus himself always held and taught. And though what he executed with regard to this object was but little,97 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 labored at this, have done something, have much still to do, and shall labor 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.98 And in others of his works99 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 398 of small importance in another part;100—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 (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,101 “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 stumbling-block 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. Linnæus102 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 1771, he had the good fortune to spend some time at Upsal; and he narrates a conversation which he held with the great 399 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 Umbellatæ must have their flower disposed in an umbel. The “mighty master” smiled,103 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 you refer to, I followed the logical rule, of borrowing a name a potiori, from the principal member. Can 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 Umbellatæ; and yet they are of the Order.” G. “I would place Eryngium among the Aggregatæ. 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 Umbellatæ with the Aggregatæ.” 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 reasons for the distribution of Natural Orders which I have published. You or some other person, after twenty or after fifty years, will discover them, and see I was in the right.”