peared. But even if this were not the case, there is a most important reason for keeping them as they are, which regards the artificial system more particularly, and of which its author was well aware; they are of all plants most uncertain in the number of their stamens. Now this uncertainty is of little moment, when we have them primarily distinguished and set apart from other plants by their Monoecious or Dioecious character; because the genera being few, and the Orders constructed widely as to number of Stamens, we find little difficulty in determining any genus, which would be by no means the case if we had them confounded with the mass of the system. Even the species of the same genus, as well as individuals of each species, differ among themselves. How unwise and unscientific then is it, to take as a primary mark of discrimination, what nature has evidently made of less consequence here than in any other case! It is somewhat like attempting a natural system, and founding its primary divisions on the artificial circumstance of number of stamens.
