THE JUSSIEUS AND THE NATURAL METHOD. 255 



coming exhausted, Hartecamp opened for him new ones ; he there found in George 

 Clififort, celebrated for his taste for natui-al history, a generous friend. It was iu 

 the cabinet, the garden, the library of CliflFort, that he wrote the following ad- 

 mirable works : The Si/ste^ti Natura;, the Fundapicnta Batanica, the B/bliotheca 

 Botanica, the Genera Plantanan, the Classes Planfarum, &cc., and that other 

 book, by uo means to be forgotten, the Ilortus CJiffortianus, a touching testimonial 

 of the gratitude of a man of genius towards one of worth. In 1736 Linnyeus made 

 a short excursion into England, and two years afterwards passed into France. 

 At the time of his arrival, Tournefort and Vaillaut were no more, and the 

 two Jussieus held the sceptre of botany. He presented himself to Antoine, 

 with a letter from Van Royen, a learned professor of Leyden, who said of him : 

 "The bearer is Charles Linuseus, whom I would cheerfnlly uame the ^;»/-?«6-e of 

 botany, if I acknowledged one." 



The Jussieus received Linnreus as Van Royen had hoped they would ; and 

 during the month he remained at Paris he was constantly with them, especially 

 with Bernard, who placed himself unreservedly at his disposal. In announcing 

 his projected visit, in the fourth letter, Linnseus had given the most lively and 

 ingenuous expression to his hopes : " Happy shall I be if you grant me your friend- 

 ship ; if I shall be allowed to see your plants and those of Tournefort ; if, through 

 you, I can make some progress in a study for which an ardent thirst consumes me. 

 Hiiherto I have received the kindness of all the botanists I have met with, and I 

 trust that you will not be more difficult." These hopes were not disappointed. To 

 form an idea of the cordial union then cemented between these two individuals, it is 

 only necessary to pass from the letter, in which Linnajus announces his departure 

 for Paris, to that which communicates his return to Stockholm — from the letter of 

 hope to the letter of acknowledgment: "I live in the recollection of your kind- 

 nesses, of your house, your table so liberally offered to me, your days which were 

 all at my disposal, your garden, your herbariums, to which I had unrestricted access. 

 I returned in safety to my own country, and fixed my residence at Stockholm, at 

 first unknown to almost every one ; soon afterwards I entered upon the practice of 

 medicine, and with success ; I have been recently appointed physician iu ordinary 

 to the marine ; lastly, I have taken a wife, a friend long and ardently coveted, and, 

 if I may say so between ourselves, sufficiently rich, so that I am leading at present 

 a contented and tranquil life." 



Proceeding with the correspondence, I pass by a letter of Linnseus which 

 mentions nothing new but the foundation of the Royal Academy of Sciences of 

 Stockholm, in 1739, and arrive at a letter of Bernard; this time, a real letter, 

 for the former was but a note : "I discovered," he says to Linnaeus, " during last 

 summer the flowers and entire fructification of the Filularia, and have published 

 a memoir upon it in the acts of our Academy. This year I shall add a history 

 of the Lemma of TheopJirastus, a plant allied to the Filularia, but differing from 

 it sufficiently to form a distinct species." 



In the memoir on the Pdularia,* I remark a passage which could scarcely 



" Bernard can, in strictness, be scarcely regarded as a writer. At most, he has left in the vol- 

 umes of our Academy but three very short memoirs on botany, one ou the Lemma, another on 

 the I'ihdaria, a third on the plantain, besides a zoological memoir, not of greater length, on the 

 'polypes. The following brief analysis of the three botanical memoirs is presented by Laurent ; 



•'The first memoir (1739) gives a description of the Filnlaria, a plant before but little 

 known. He shows therein the sexual organs, which had not then been discovered, and proves, 

 by their analogy with those of the ferns, that it is of the same family. The stamens especi- 

 aiiy are described witli care, as well as the form of their pollen, and the phenomena which 

 fhey present in the water, seen with the microscope. He compares them witli those he had 

 observed in the pollen of other plants submitted to the same examination. Placed on icater, 

 he says, thrAj presently eject, by a small rent ichicli takes place tit a point of their capsule, a jet 

 of liquid or oily matter, icltich remains in the water icithout mixing icith it, and in small globules 

 of extreme tenuity. These grains of pollen, swelling in the fluid like small vesicles, have an 



