QQ HISTORICAL EULOGIUM 



printer ! A still more remarkable trait is, that the earlier 

 sheets having been printed without those Notes which are 

 appended to the characters of the Families, and which per- 

 haps constitute the most hifrhly finished, and the deepest 

 portions of the whole work, M. de Jussieu caused these leaves 

 to be mercilessly cancelled, nor flinched in the least degree 

 from what might have seemed like an extreme measure in a 

 more ordinary work: for he felt that the book he was writing 

 would be eternal. 



The printing, and consequently the composition, for they 

 proceeded simultaneously, lasted fifteen months, and the 

 work appeared in July, 1789. It opens by that celebrated 

 Introduction, in which the author displays anew, (and this 

 time, in all their true order), those great principles which he 

 had announced in his two Memoirs of 1773, and 1774. Here 

 these principles are seen to compose a complete body of 

 science. Fifteen years' close study might well confer luci- 

 dity, combination, and strength ; and here, by his reflections, 

 his experience and profound meditation, the author rises to 

 the highest rules of the art of method, and combines with 

 this art a new science, a science created by himself, that of 

 characters. 



Two facts preside in every view of the Natural Method; 

 the first is the subordination of' the characters among them- 

 selves. Availing himself by turns, of reason and experience, 

 M. de Jussieu concluded, as we have seen, that organs were 

 important according to their functions, and when this function 

 was unknown, he decided on their value from their constancy; 

 the latter being an ingenious contrivance, whereby a fact, 

 that it is sometimes impossible, and almost always difficult to 

 ascertain, namely, ihe function of an organ, is skilfully super- 

 seded by this other test, than which nothing can be easier, 

 simpler, and more evident, namely, its constancy. 



The second constituent principle in the Natural Method 

 is the subjection of the characters to the groups. In the -Arti- 

 ficial Method, wehegin by selecting one character from amongst 

 all the others, and then reducing the species to this character; 



