106 HISTORY OF BOTANY. 



"Universal Method" of Adanson. The first author of the system 

 was Bernard de Jussieu, who applied it in the arrangement of the gar- 

 den of the Trianon, in 1759, though he never published upon it. His 

 nephew, Antoine Laurent de Jussieu, in his Treatise of the Arrange- 

 ment of the Trianon* gave an account of the principles and orders of 

 his uncle, which he adopted when he succeeded him ; and, at a later 

 period, published his Genera Plantarum secundum Ordines Naturales 

 disposita ; a work, says Cuvier, which perhaps forms as important an 

 epoch in the sciences of observation, as the Chimie of Lavoisier does 

 in the sciences of experiment. The object of the Jussieus was to 

 obtain a system which should be governed by the natural affinities of 

 the plants, while, at the same time, the characters by which the orders 

 were ostensibly determined, should be as clear, simple, and precise, as 

 those of the best artificial system. The main points in these charac- 

 ters were the number of the cotyledons, and the structure of the seed ; 

 and subordinate to this, the insertion of the stamina, which they dis- 

 tinguished as epigynouz, periyynous, and hypogynous, according as 

 they were inserted over, about, or under, the germen. And the 

 classes which were formed by the Jussieus, though they have since 

 been modified by succeeding writers, have been so far retained by the 

 most profound botanists, notwithstanding all the new care and new 

 light which have been bestowed upon the subject, as to show that 

 what was done at first, was a real and important step in the solution 

 of the problem. 



The merit of the formation of this natural method of plants must 

 be divided between the two Jussieus. It has been common to speak 

 of the nephew, Antoine Laurent, as only the publisher of his uncle's 

 work. 7 But this appears, from a recent statement, 8 to be highly un- 

 just. Bernard left nothing in writing but the catalogues of the garden 

 of the Trianon, which he had arranged according to his own views ; 

 but these catalogues consist merely of a series of names without ex- 

 planation or reason added. The nephew, in 1773, undertook and 

 executed for himself the examination of a natural family, the Ranun- 

 culacece ; and he was wont to relate (as his son informs us) that it 



Mtm. Ac. P. 1774. 



1 Prodromus Florce Penins. Ind. Orient. Wight and Walker-Arnott, Introd. 

 p. xxxv. 



By Adrien de Jussieu, son of Antoine Laurent, in the Annales dcs Sc. A"a<., 

 Nov 1834. 



