268 THE JUSSIEUS AND THE NATURAL METHOD. , 



seen Jean Jacques Rousseau ask from Bernard directions for the studies wliicli 

 consoled his latter years. For five seasons, the author of E?mlius assiduously- 

 followed the herborizations conducted by Laurent, and often succeeded in turning 

 their course towards Montmorency. De Jussieu, fascinated by the blandish- 

 ments of the distinguished man, complied the more readily with his wishes on 

 such occasions, because a compact existed between them which interdicted all 

 allusion to the works of the philosopher, and under this condition the latter 

 sUowed no want of the qualities of a gay and complaisant companion. 



Let us return to the two memoirs, which may be considered as the basis of all 

 that was effected by Laurent in the sequel.* They had been written while 

 Bernard and Linnaeus were alive ; a few years had elapsed and the two patri- 

 archs of botany were no more. Thenceforward the first place was open, and 

 all felt that it was Laurent who must occupy it ; it Avas impossible that he him- 

 self should not feel it. Accordingly, we find in a letter of his, written about 

 this time, these noticeable words : " There are circumstances of which it is our duty 

 to take advantage, and one offers itself to me which J should be wrong to neg- 

 lect. We have lost, within three mouths, the three first botanists of Europe, 

 M. Haller in Switzerland, M. Linnaeus in Sweden, the third at Paris. It would 

 be a proud thing to succeed them, and to retrieve for France the pre-eminence 

 which foreigners have disputed." These words evince the consciousness which 

 he felt in his own strength ; what still more evinces it is the labor which he 

 then projected of comprehending the entire vegetable realm within the princi- 

 ples which he had just established in his two memoirs; a vast enterprise, result- 

 ing in his great work on ihe families of plants, the celebrated Genera Flantarum 

 which we have already had under consideration. 



In this admirable production a circumstance especially worthy of remark is 

 the use which the author has known how to make of the materials within his 

 reach at the time of its composition. Their number has since been increased 

 fourfold, and yet there is no great principle of the natural order which is not 

 laid down in his book, and scarcely any of the combinations established by his 

 successors of which the germ is not to be found. Fontenclle admires in Tourne- 

 fort a classification in which twelve hundred new species, which, he adds, no one 

 expected, have found admission without disturbance of the plan. What would 

 he have said of the method of M. de Jussieu, in which nearly fifty thousand 

 species, unknown at the moment he wi-otc, have found their place, and almost 

 everywhere a place indicated in advance, a place which expected them ? 



I ijave said that the author had established a hundred primitive families ; none 

 of these has been suppressed ; more than half have undergone no modification. 

 Three have been transferred, and transferred entire, into neighbouring groups, 

 which is but a different mode of association. Of the others, the greater part, 

 through the natural effect of so many new species collected in the lapse of nearly 

 half a century, have been necessarily disintegrated and subdivided ; but scarcely 

 one has been so, except by sections or divisions indicated by Laurent himself. 

 Finally, there are five, and only five, of them which have been recognized as 

 natural only by fragments. Hesitation then exists only respecting some frag- 

 ments of families, some scattered species, and even here there is rarely ever wantino^ 

 a note, an indication, a doubt, pointing in the direction of the truth — truth which 

 only the most wonderful sagacity could then have descried, so few were the ele- 

 ments at hand from which to deduce it, and so great the need of since collecting 

 new ones, in order to establish it in a complete manner. 



Systems grow more sacred with age, and the promoter of the natural method 

 lived long enough to see it almost universally adopted. Desfontaines not only 

 taught it, but rendered it essential service by an important discovery in vege- 



* For the note, which, iu the orij^iual, is appended to this passage, the reader is referred to 

 the end of the article, whither it has been consigned on account of its length. 



