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sent at the same time; for though the Orders of the 14th and 15th Classes are distinguished by the fruit, they can be clearly ascertained even in the earliest state of the germen[1]. Tournefort founded his Orders on the fruit; and his countryman Adanson is charmed with the propriety of this measure, because the fruit comes after the flower and thus precedence is given to the nobler part which distinguishes the primary divisions or Classes! But happily the laws of a drawing-room do not extend to philosophy, and we are allowed to prefer parts which we are sure to meet with at one and the same moment, without waiting a month or two, after we have made
- ↑ An instance apparently to the contrary occurs in the history of my Hastingia coccinea, Exot. Bot. t. 80, a plant most evidently, both by character and natural affinity, belonging to the Didynamia Gymnospermia, but as I could no where find it described in that Order, I concluded it to be unpublished; and was not a little surprised to be told some time afterwards, that it was extant in the works of my friends Retzius and Willdenow, under Didynamia Angiospermia, by the name of Holmskioldia, after a meritorious botanist. This last name therefore, however unutterable, must remain; and I wish the Linnæan system, as well as myself, might be as free from blame in all other cases as in this.
