The vegetable kingdom, or, The structure, classification, and uses of plants : illustrated upon the natural system / by John Lindley ; with upwards of five hundred illustrations.
- Lindley, John, 1799-1865.
- Date:
- MDCCCXLVIII [1847]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The vegetable kingdom, or, The structure, classification, and uses of plants : illustrated upon the natural system / by John Lindley ; with upwards of five hundred illustrations. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.
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![to all known rules. “When Zoology,” says Mr. Milue Edwards, “is ouly studied in systematic works, it i3 often supposed that each class, each family, and each genus, present to us boundaries precisely defined, and that there can be no uncertainty as to the place to be assigned, in a natural classification, to every animal the organisation of which is sufficiently known. But when we study this science from Nature herself, we are soon couvinced of the contrary, and we sometimes see the transition from one plan of structure to an entirely different scheme of organisation take place bv degrees so completely shaded one into the other that it becomes very difficult to trace the line of demarcation between the groups thus con- nected.”—Ann. Sc. Nat. 1840, Sept. Ray long ago pointed this out in a very remarkable passage, which cannot be too often quoted. “ Verurn quod alias dixi illud hie repeto et inculco, non sperandam a me Methodum undequaque perfectam et omnibus suis numeris absolutam, qiue et plantas in genera ita distribuat ut universte species comprehendantur, nulla adhuc anomala et sui generis relit]ua, et unumquodque genus notis suis propriis et characteristics ita circumscribat, ut nullae inveniantur species incerti, ut ita dicam, laris, et ad plura genera revocabiles. Nec enim id patitur natura rei. Nam, cum Natura (ut dici solet) non faciat saltus, neque ab extremo ad extremum transeat nisi per medium, inter superiores et inferiores, rerum ordines nonnullas mediae et ambiguae condi- tionis producere solet, quae de utroque participent, et utrosque velut con- nectant, ut ad utrum pertineant omnino incertum sit. Praeterea eadem alma parens in methodi cujuscunque angustias cocrceri repugnat, sed ad libertatem et avrovofilav suam nullis legibus obnoxiam ostentandam, in unoquoque rerum ordine nonnullas species creare solet, tanquam exceptiones a regulis generalibus, singulares et anomalas.”—(Raii, Hist. Plant, vol. i. Pra-f.) Linnaeus did but copy this when he asserted that Nature makes no leaps (Natura non facit saltus.—Phil. Bot. 77.) This doctrine has, however, been lately called in question by no less eminent a writer than M. Alphonse De Candolle, who requires that absolute limits should be assigned to all groups of whatever degree. “ If,” he says, “ we cannot state in what respect two families differ permanently and universally, those two families are but one. Two pieces of land which touch each other form one island, and not two ; but two pieces of land which are separated by an arm of the sea, form two islands, and not one.” —Annales des Sciences, series 3, vol. 1. p. 254. But this is a kind of reasoning wholly inapplicable to Natural History, for the reasons so ad- mirably given by Ray, and is contrary to all experience. If the groups limited by M. Alphonse De Candolle himself are examined by this standard they alone suffice to demonstrate how visionary are such expectations. Mr. Bentham has satisfactorily answered the learned Botanist of Geneva. “ We Botanists,” he says, “ cannot be so mathematically exact ns geogra- phers, and where an isthmus is very narrow, we must class the peninsula with the island. How often does it happen that two largo Orders, say of five hundred to two thousand or three thousand species, totally distinct from each other in ail those species by a series of constant characters, are yet connected by some small isolated genus of a dozen, half a dozen, nay a single species, in which these very characters arc so inconstant, uncer- tain, or variously combined as to leave no room for the strait through which we ought to navigate between the two islands.”—London Journal of Botany, 4. 232. It would be very convenient to find that the views of M. Alphonse De Candolle were practicable, but in truth they are quite Utopian. 1](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2130774x_0035.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
