Page:An introduction to physiological and systematical botany (1st edition).djvu/397

 Rh been the first among English writers to set a contrary example, had I not fortunately been furnished with peculiar materials for the purpose.

The beauty and perfection of these essential generic characters consist in perspicuity, and a clear concise style of contrasting them with each other. All feebleness, all superfluity, should be avoided by those who are competent to the purpose, and those who are not should decline the task. Comparative words, as long or short, without any scale of comparison, are among the grossest, though most common, faults in such compositions.

The natural character seems to have been, at one time, what Linnæus most esteemed. It is what he has used throughout his Genera Plantarum, a work now superseded by the essential characters in his Systema Vegetabilium, and therefore in some measure laid aside. The disadvantages of the natural character are, that it does not particularly express, nor direct the mind to, the most important marks, and that it can accord only with such species of the genus as are known to the author, being therefore necessarily