266 THE JUSSIEUS AND THE NATURAL METHOD. 



*' From that time," he says, " I conceived the plan of a new classification ; * * 

 I projected, upon these principles, a new method, whose entire plan is set forth 

 in my memoir of 1774; I combined together the labors of the three authors 

 before cited." ***** At length, in 1788, after fifteen 



years of this persistent labor in the study of characters, the printing of the 

 Genera commenced. The author was so full of his book that he began to print 

 without having written it, or, as he himself says, " it was sent to press in pro- 

 portion as it was composed." It appeared in 1789, under the title : Genera 

 j)l antarum secundum ordines naturales disposita, juxta metJiodum in horto regio 

 parisiensi exaratam. 



Now that both Bernard and the Genera are known to us, may we not say with 

 confidence that Bernard would never have taken upon himself the execution of 

 so laborious an exposition ? He loved truth, but sought it only for the satisfaction 

 it pnjcured him. On a nature of so much simplicity neither vanity nor ambition 

 had any hold. In 1758, after the death of his brother Antoine, whose sub- 

 demonstrator he had been, it was proposed to him to be advanced to the first 

 place; he preferred to retain the second: "The old," he answered, "are content 

 with what they have ; they do not like change." In 1770, Lemonnier, the 

 successor of Antoine, being appointed first physician to the king, and hence 

 obliged to reside at Versailles, it became necessary to find a substitute ; Buff'ou 

 referred the nomination to Bernard, who presented Laurent. Very different in 

 this respect from his uncle, the latter accepted the charge, though then only 

 twenty-two years of age and nearly ignorant of botany. 



" It was now time," he tells us, "that I should apply seriously to the study 

 of the science ; the method of Tournefort, then taught in the garden, was, it 

 is true, very easy, and the students were novices; there was little difficulty in 

 retailing to them in the morning what I had acquired the evening before. My 

 uncle, who had always arranged the plants, whether for his brother Antoine 

 or his successor Lemonnier, rendered me the same service, and, in the earlier 

 lessons, supplied me with the characters of the principal species." When 

 Bernard, in 1770, fulfilled this part of sub-demonstrator to His nephew of twenty- 

 two, he was himself seventy-one years of age ; no circumstance perhaps could 

 more strongly mark the difference of their respective characters. 



LIFE OF LAURENT DE JUSSIEU A.\D INFLUENCE OF HIS LABORS. 



It has been seen that Antoine Laurent de Jussieu, born at Lyon April 12, 

 1748, and adopted by his uncle Bernard in 1765, at once became, under the direc- 

 tion of the latter, a master in science. The explanation of this is, that having 

 been guided by the impressions he received into apath atonce true and untrodden, 

 all the steps which he took were naturally confident and progressive. 

 ******** 



In the memoir which procured him, at the age of twenty-five, admission to 

 the Academy, he had laid down the principle " that, without neglecting the 

 nomenclature, it was above all necessary to devote attention to the investiga- 

 tion of characters, the most important part of botany." This was one of the 

 truths which had occupied the life of Bernard, and now proclaimed by Laurent, 

 it challenged general recognition at the moment when it »had become most neces- 

 sary to the progress of the science. 



In 1774, he presented, in a second memoir, written on occasion of the reor- 

 ganization of the botanical school of the Jardin Rojjal, the plan of a new classi- 

 fication. This new frame-work of the science, a skilful combination of the labors 

 of Bernard at Trianon, of the method of Tournefort and of the nomenclature 

 of Linn;eus, was developed with a precision and confidence which struck all con- 

 siderate minds, and established Laurent as an innovator at the Academy and 



