their matter on the principles of a true natural system, but were only anxious to give some kind of order to their descriptions of individual plants. Hence their divisions do not appear under the names of classes and subdivisions ('genera majora et minora,' as they would have been called at that time), but they are sections of the whole work kept as symmetrical as was possible. If we would discover in these works whatever may really lay claim to systematic value, we must not rely on the sections as they are typographically distinguished, but must observe within each of them the order in which the plants are given, and then it becomes apparent that within the frame once established forms naturally allied are, as far as may be, grouped together. For instance, we find in the second book of de l'Écluse's work first of all a long list of true Liliaceae and Asphodeleae, Melanthaceae, and Irideae described in unbroken succession; then comes Calamus, and then without any explanation a number of the Ranunculaceae, among which the genera Ranunculus and Anemone are very well distinguished; but then follows the genus Cyclamen with several species, and next a number of Orchideae, in the middle of which appear Orobanche and Corydalis, followed by Helleborus niger, Veratrum album, Polygonatum, and others. So it is in the other sections, though in general the species of a genus stand together, and even the genera of a family are not unfrequently united; but with all this there are no proper breaks, because other considerations are perpetually disturbing the feeling for natural relationship. The descriptions of de l'Écluse are generally commended, and they deserve to be commended for their fulness of detail and their attention to the structure of the flowers, though he, like de l'Obel and Dodoens, describes the leaves more minutely than any other part of the plant.
With de l'Obel[1], as has been already observed, the feeling
- ↑ Mathias de l'Obel (Lobelius), the friend and fellow-countryman of
