6G HISTORICAL EULOGIUM 



since been found requisite to enable subsequent writers to 

 work out the points which he left doubtful, in an entirely 

 complete and satisfactory manner ; and now, if I were asked 

 where lies the peculiar merit, the merit that marks every 

 page as it were of this work, and whereby it is so strikingly 

 distinguished from all that had previously appeared in this 

 wide and well trodden field ? my ready reply would be that 

 this merit resides chiefly in the unvarying precision of detail 

 which assigns to every fact its right place; and which, not 

 confined to the main leading results, that are rapidly marked 

 in each genus, neglects none of the circumstances in all the 

 orders on which those results are founded; a merit of essen- 

 tial importance in a study where all the facts are necessary, 

 where hardly any one of them can be supplied by another, 

 and where nearly all are of equally difficult acquisition, a 

 merit perhaps the rarest of all, and illustrative of that deep 

 axiom of Buffon's, that " patietice," that is, constancy in great 

 efforts, " is genius." 



M. de Jussieu has been blamed, and justly, for found- 

 ing some of his classes on the fof^m of the corolla, and it 

 is certainly the weak point in his method, which he him- 

 self plainly confesses, *' These classes have," he says, 

 *'the defect of being unable to subsist, without admitting 

 some exceptions ;" and he adds, that if only strictness and 

 not convenience be consulted, we ought to adhere to the 

 sole invariable characters, the lobes of the embryo^ and the 

 insertion of the stainens. Still, in proportion as the number 

 of species has augmented, it has become evident that even 

 this last character, that derived from the insertion of the 

 stamens, does sometimes vary, and should consequently be 

 excluded from classical characters. Every thin"- on the con- 

 trary has confirmed the grand division founded on the lobes 

 of the embryo. M. Desfontaines, by one of the most inter- 

 esting of discoveries in vegetable anatomy, has demonstrated 

 that the distinctions drawn from the ortjans of vegetation 

 answer in every instance, as regards this division, to corre- 

 sponding peculiarities in the organs of fructification. We 



