THE FRENCH INSTITUTE. 89 



ture of the ring of Saturn, which Galileo, with his more imperfect 

 instrument, failed to make out. He also discovered one of the 

 satellites of Saturn, but refused to look for more, since there were 

 now as many satellites discovered as there were planets, and, from 

 a false conception of the harmony of the universe, he considered 

 it useless to search after others. He had the mortification of wit- 

 nessing the success of Cassini in discovering four others. 



In January, 1699, a new charter was granted to the Academy 

 of Sciences. Until this time its charter was only preparatory, no 

 provision having been made for the government of the society, 

 its purpose, or the election of new members. The new charter 

 provided for twenty pensionnaires, three geometricians, three as- 

 tronomers, three chemists, three anatomists, three botanists, three 

 to study mechanics, one secretary, and one treasurer ; twenty asso- 

 ciates, of whom eight may be foreigners ; twenty eleves, or pupils, 

 who acted as assistants to the associates ; and ten honorary mem- 

 bers. At the beginning of the year each member must declare 

 the object of his study for the coming year, and all experiments 

 must be repeated and tested by the Academy as a body. The 

 Academy could not fill the vacancies in its own membership, but 

 must recommend two or three candidates for each vacancy, and 

 the Government had the right to make the selections from those 

 recommended. The king had rooms fitted up for the Academy in 

 the Louvre, where the organized body met for the first time April 

 29, 1699. 



Under the labors of the Cassini, Malebranche, Fontenelle, 

 Tournefort, Maraldi, and Me'ry, the reputation of the Academy 

 of Sciences continued to increase until the growing luster of New- 

 ton's investigations and those of other members of the Royal So- 

 ciety threw it somewhat into shadow. Unfortunately, a spirit of 

 national jealousy caused the scientists at Paris and London to 

 misunderstand or willfully underestimate the services of their 

 rivals, which delayed the settlement of many scientific questions 

 longer than was otherwise necessary. 



It was said of Fontenelle, who was Secretary of the Academy of 

 Sciences for forty-two consecutive years, that when his Gdometrie 

 de l'lnfini was submitted to the Academy, he declared, " There, 

 now, is a book which only eight men in Europe can understand, 

 and the author is not one of the eight." 



While the Cassinis were for so long time making their name 

 famous at the Paris Observatory, there lived in Paris a family of 

 Jussieus, five in number, and through a period of nearly a century 

 and a half, whose labors in the Jardin du Roi and Academy of 

 Sciences made them equally famous as botanists. With the Jus- 

 sieus arose the "natural method" of botanical classification, as 

 it is known, in contradistinction to the artificial of Linnaeus. 



