Institutes of botany; : containing accurate, compleat and easy descriptions of all the known genera of plants: translated from the Latin of the celebrated Charles von Linné, Professor of Medicine and Botany in the University of Upsal; First physician to the King of Sweden, Knight of the Polar Star, and member of the most learned societies in Europe. To which are prefixed, I. A view of the ancient and present state of botany. II. A Synopsis, exhibiting the essential or striking characters which serve to discriminate genera of the same class and order; as likewise the secondary characters of each genus, or those derived from the port, habit or general appearance of the plants which compose it. / By Colin Milne, Reader on Botany in London, author of the Botanical Dictionary.
- Milne, Colin, 1743 or 1744-1815.
- Date:
- M,DCC,LXXI. [i.e. 1771]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Institutes of botany; : containing accurate, compleat and easy descriptions of all the known genera of plants: translated from the Latin of the celebrated Charles von Linné, Professor of Medicine and Botany in the University of Upsal; First physician to the King of Sweden, Knight of the Polar Star, and member of the most learned societies in Europe. To which are prefixed, I. A view of the ancient and present state of botany. II. A Synopsis, exhibiting the essential or striking characters which serve to discriminate genera of the same class and order; as likewise the secondary characters of each genus, or those derived from the port, habit or general appearance of the plants which compose it. / By Colin Milne, Reader on Botany in London, author of the Botanical Dictionary. Source: Wellcome Collection.
![1-8 A V I E W O E 1' II E - f three cells} the pulp paffing for one divifion, the cavities of the done or nut lor the reniainin!^ two. i Singular as is this mode of calculation, it is not the only ]>ai-adox which our author has been accufed of maintaining. The clience of the flower is made by Ray, Tournefort, Rivinus and moll botaniils to confiil in the flamina and flyle. This pofidon Knaut abiolutely denies, and has eflablifhed for a principle, that the flower is eflentially conffituted by the petals only. The flower-cup, llamina and flyle are of little fignificance with Knaut; their prefence dees not conflitute a flower, if the petals are wanting; neither is their abfence fuffleient to deflroy its ex- iflence, if the petals are prefent. From this propofltion two co¬ rollaries are evidently deducible. The one, that a flower with¬ out petals is a folecifm in Botany; the other, that the regularity and irregularity of the flower can never depend on the flamina and flyle, which are only cccafionally prefent, and in no wife ef- fential to its exiftence. It w^ere unnecefTary to obferve on thefe dodlrines; their fallacy mufl be obvious to' every reader. I CLOSE my review of Knaut’s tenets and method of arrange¬ ment with the examination of an heretical aphorifm laid down by that author refpedling his diflribution of the genera. To be qualified for pronouncing of its merits, we mufl have accurate and precife ideas upon the fubjedl; and thefe can in no way fo certainly be obtained, as by an enquiry into the nature of that par¬ ticular member of a method denominated a genus. In every artificial plan of arangement, the claflical charadler is arbitrary, and depends upon a Angle circumflance. The orders or fecondary divifions are fubdivifions of the clafs; each order therefore, be- fides its own proper chara(Cler, pofTefTes the common charadler of the clafs, of which it is a fubdivifion. As orders fubdivide the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b30418173_0140.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
