THE JUSSIEUS AND THE NATURAL METHOD. 255 



coming exhausted, Hartecamp opened for bim new ones ; lae there found in George 

 Ciiffort, celebrated for his taste for natural history, a generous friend. It was in 

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

 mirable workn : The Si/.sipjn Naturce, the Funda?nenia Botanica, the Bibliothcca 

 Botanicce, the Genera Plantarum, the Glasses Plantarum, (Sec, and that other 

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

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

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

 At the time of his arrival, Tournefort and Vaillant 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 Linnaius, whom I would cheerfully name iho, prince of 

 botany, if I acknowledged one." 



The Jussieus received Linnaeus 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 xinreservedly at his disposal. In announcing 

 his projected visit, in the fourth letter, Limiosus 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. 

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

 tnist 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 Liunasus announces his depart,ure 

 for P;u'is, 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 

 allatmy disposal, your garden, your herbariums, to which Ihad 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 appoint( d physician in 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 con-espondence, I pass by a letter of Linnreus 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 lettei', 

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

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

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

 of the Lemma of Tkcoplirastus, a plant allied to the Pilularia, but differing from 

 it sufficiently to form a distinct species." 



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



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

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

 the Pilularia, a third on the plantain, besides a zoological memoir, noto-f greater length, on the 

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



"The first memoir (17:39) gives a description of the Pilularia, 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- 

 ally are described with care, as well as the form of their pollen, and the phenomena which 

 they present in the water, seen with the microscope. He compares them with tiiosc he had 

 observed in the pollen of other plants submitted to the same examination. Plund on water, 

 he says, they presently eject, by a small rent tohich takes place at a paint of their capsule, a jet 

 of liquid or oily matter, ichich remains in the water tcithout mixing with it, and in small globules 

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



