M. ADRIEN DE JUSSIEU. 139 
The names of Antoine, of Joseph, of Bernard, and of Antoine-Laurent 
de Jussieu are popularly known among us: these great men are among 
our national honours, and we may well be proud of the influence which 
their labours exerted in the whole kingdom of Natural History. To 
these illustrious names we must now add that of the last of the family, 
Adrien de Jussieu, the worthy representative of the fathers of the Na- 
tural System, whose recent death has cast a gloom over the whole 
scientific world. You have appointed me, as his more immediate pupil, 
to collect the principal incidents of a life which was so dear to us; and 
I shall strive to justify your confidence, and thus also to repay some 
small portion of that debt of gratitude which I can never hope to dis- 
charge. 
Adrien de Jussieu was born at the Museum, on the 23rd of Decem- 
ber, 1797. His delicate health forbade his being entered at an early 
age at college, and he was educated at home by his parents. His 
mother, eager to contribute towards the opening of his remarkably 
intelligent mind, grappled with a study from which her sex usually 
shrinks, and taught herself Latin that she might instruct her son. In 
time however Adrien's constitution became more robust, and he was 
enabled to share in the advantages of a public education, the studies 
of the Napoleon Lyceum completing what had been commenced at 
home. At seventeen years of age, in 1814, the young De Jussieu ob- 
tained the highest prize in the annual competition, and gave a happy 
augury of his bright and successful future. 
Free to follow his own predilections, Adrien de Jussieu would per- 
haps have devoted himself exclusively to literature. His profound ac- 
quaintance with the two languages of antiquity, his keen appreciation 
of the grand ideas-and noble style of the learned writers of Greece and 
Rome, the peculiar turn of his mind, which, like that of Erasmus, had 
a touch of scepticism, leading him to delight in elegant discussion, his - 
University success, all swayed him in favour of literature. But accord- - 
ing to the good old axiom, “ Noblesse oblige," he early felt that upon —— 
himself, the son, the grand-nephew of eminenf botanists, the duty de- 
volved of labouring in behalf of the inheritance which his forefathers ——— 
had bequeathed him. Without relinquishing his favourite books, he 
gallantly devoted himself to Natural History, and his first essays in — 
this new career foretold the lustre which he would confer on the ie? 
trious name which he bore. 
