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64 HISTORICAL EULOGIUM 



different characters; and thus again, he objects to grouping, 

 (at least grouping according to the most striking features in 

 each group) ; families alone does he admit, and calculates 

 their number at fifty-eight ; classes he refuses ; and yet does 

 not seem to be aware, that in thus collecting groups together 

 into a kingdom (as he styles it), and rising from lower to 

 higher, beginning at the species, with a graduated ascent, 

 from species to genera, from genera to families, and from 

 families to the kingdom, he adopts in fact, that very method, 

 that gradation, which lie condemns. 



The individual by whose labours M. de Jussieu profited 

 most, was his uncle Bernard. Still, the Catalogue of the 

 latter author is, like the Orders of Linnaeus, nothing but 

 a series of names. The principles, however, which guided 

 Bernard, whether in forming families or in dividing families 

 into classes, are faithfully preserved by his nephew, and are 

 exactly what I have already detailed, — namely, the subordi- 

 nation of characters among themselves^ and the subjection of 

 characters again to groups. 



To Bernard therefore belongs the honour of havinfj laid 

 the first stone of the edifice of the Natural Arrangement, he 

 it was who descried the principles on which this arrange- 

 ment is founded. But, while on the one hand, he applied 

 these principles without clearly defining them ; so on the 

 other, in tlie matter of application, he gives only a string of 

 names. In Bernard, we see nothing of that Philosophy of 

 the Method, which discerned a new horizon to the natural 

 sciences; nor of that discriminating selection {choix raisonne) 

 of the characters, which, variously grouped, mark out the 

 families ; and these are the two real honours, the foundation 

 of M. de Jussieu's enduring fame. 



Far be it from our intention to seek to raise one of these 

 celebrated men at the expense of the other ! Bernard is the 

 inventor; he took the first step; and if his nephew went far 

 beyond him, it is because he started from the point to which 

 his uncle had guided him. Truth is my only object, and 

 while seeking for it in the study of their minds, 1 think I can 



