- sion into groups from external aspect or "facies," does not
admit of being applied to the whole vegetable kingdom, so also, in such a classification, the grounds on which the division is made are quite different from those on which our systems of natural families and of plants (including the whole of the vegetable kingdom) have been so happily established. Physiognomic classification grounds her divisions and the choice of her types on whatever possesses "mass,"—such as shape, position and arrangement of leaves, their size, and the character and surfaces (shining or dull) of the parenchyma,—therefore, on all that are called more especially the "organs of vegetation," i. e. those on which the preservation,—the nourishment and development,—of the individual depend; while systematic Botany, on the other hand, grounds the arrangement of natural families on the consideration of the organs of propagation,—those on which the continuation or preservation of the species depends. (Kunth, Lehrbuch der Botanik, 1847, Th. i. S. 511; Schleiden, die Pflanze und ihr Leben, 1848, S. 100). It was already taught in the school of Aristotle (Probl. 20, 7), that the production of seed is the ultimate object of the existence and life of the plant. Since Caspar Fried. Wolf (Theoria Generationis, § 5-9), and since our great (German) Poet, the process of development in the organs of fructification has become the morphological foundation of all systematic botany.
That study, and the study of the physiognomy of plants, I here repeat, proceed from two different points of view: the first from agreement in the inflorescence or in the delicate
