142 MEMOIR OF M. ADRIEN DE JUSSIEU. 
not be baffled by any sudden and perplexing anomaly. All these qua- 
lities (not common, singly) did Adrien de Jussieu possess in admirable 
. combination; and all his students, as well as myself, who so long shared 
his labours, can testify that he never relaxed his exertions, even under 
the attacks of the cruel disease which finally carried him off, and which 
his rural excursions never failed to aggravate. 
M. de Jussieu was far however from being satisfied with thus advan- 
 eing his favourite science. He felt himself called upon to promote it 
in a more direct and lasting manner. A series of memoirs, models in 
_ their way, and wherein the growing progress of botany has found no- 
thing which required modification, proceeded from his pen, and fix his 
rank among the first European botanists. I have just alluded to-his 
Monograph of the Huphorbiacee. Similarly confining his attention to 
generic divisions, he displayed the sagacity of his views in his Mono- 
graph of the Rutacee, and added to it those diagrams which display, 
with peculiar simplicity and faithfulness, the relative position of the 
floral organs. In 1830 he published a third Essay on the Meliacee: 
it is even completer than the two previous ones, for it includes all the 
specific characters of the plants in that family. It was followed by 
the Monograph of the Malpighiacee, M. de Jussieu's crowning per- 
.. formance, and on which he laboured for fourteen successive years, for 
.. it was not till 1843 that this noble Memoir was published, and it would 
have sufficed alone to establish its author's reputation. The deepest 
questions of anatomy and physiology are here raised and settled; they 
are the floral symmetry, anomalies, fecundation, and the remarkable 
‘structure of climbing plants in general. M. de Jussieu has adapted to 
_ the plates, illustrative of the generic character, a system of referential 
. marks, which consists (as had been attempted by Mr. Robert Brown in 
. bis ‘Ilustrationes Plantarum Nove Hollandiæ’) in constantly desig- 
mating the same organ by the.same combination of letters or of sigus. 
. But what few botanists have noticed, and which seems to me peculiarly 
_ deserving attention, is the concluding plate, in which he has endeavoured 
. to express the multiplied affinities of genera, and has thus shown,that 
_ the Natural System is not, as had long been supposed, the Linear Sys- 
dem. Y — overstepping of my present limits, if I proceeded to 
explain this novel view ; and I will therefore only say that it contains 
the germ of the highest philosophical ideas. This Monograph of the 
Malpighiacea is a work, executed in the maturity of his abilities, and 
a B. iL 
