Page:An introduction to physiological and systematical botany (1st edition).djvu/386

 356 conceived their own systems to be each most consonant with the order of Nature, as well as most commodious for use, and it was reserved for him to perceive and to explain that these were two very distinct things.

The most superficial observer must perceive something of the classification of Nature. The Grasses, Umbelliferous plants, Mosses, Sea-weeds, Ferns, Liliaceous plants, Orchises, Compound flowers, each constitute a family strikingly similar in form and qualities among themselves, and no less evidently distinct from all others. If the whole vegetable kingdom could with equal facility be distributed into tribes or classes, the study of Botany on such a plan would be no less easy than satisfactory. But as we proceed in this path, we soon find ourselves in a labyrinth. The natural orders and families of plants, so far from being connected in a regular series, approach one another by so many points, as to bewilder instead of directing us. We may seize some striking combinations and analogies; but the further we proceed, the more we become sensible that, even if we had the whole vegetable world before us at one view,