THE JUSSIEUS AND THE NATURAL METHOD. 269 



table auatomy. Richard, who first applied exact and detailed aualysii?, was 

 often associated with Jusaieu in his labors. I find a memoir inscribed by him 

 to the latter in the words, To the greatest botanist of Europe ; and no one 

 who ever knew Richard will suspect him of flattery. The penetrating and 

 critical spirit of Du Petit-Thouars found nothing to censure; De Candolle, Mir- 

 bel, Robert Brown have developed the method in their writings; Humboldt 

 has applied it to botanical geography ; the pupils reared by them, and the gene- 

 rations which have succeeded, have all rallied under its laws. Intelligent acqui- 

 escence has in this been only equalled by the docility with which vegetable 

 nature has enlarged by thousands of species the outline originally traced, without 

 permitting an infringement of the ordinances of the lawgiver. 



In 1793, the Jarditi des PI antes received a new organization, and took the 

 title of Museum of Natural History. Daubcnton was the first director, and was 

 succeeded by De Jussieu. In those difficult times, he devoted himself entirely 

 to tlie administration of this admirable establishment. The libraries of the religious 

 bodies having been suppressed, he obtained leave to select from them all that 

 had a bearing on natural history, and thus laid the foundation of the present rich 

 collection of the Museum. Nearly alwtiys secluded in his cabinet, he had re- 

 mained a stranger to the political agitations which then convulsed France ; it 

 had even been a subject of public reproach that he never appeared in the pop- 

 ular assemblies. He judged it expedient therefore to repair to his section, which 

 was that of the Sans Culottes. It was the day for choosing a president, and, 

 to his amazement, he found himself promptly promoted to the honors of the 

 chair. From this time municipal dignities were showered on him ; dignities 

 which it Avas dangerous to refuse, however earnestly he might covet the retire- 

 ment of his garden. Yet, in the exercise of functions thus unexpected, his spirit 

 of order and method suggested to him a report on the hospitals of Paris, which 

 is still regarded as a model. 



As a relaxation from severer studies, M. de Jussieu applied himself to the 

 compilation of Monoirs of the Museum, an exact and complete history of men 

 and things. We there see the origin of the Jardin Royal, which was «.t first but 

 a garden for medicinal plants ; this was indeed its legal title, its cabinet being 

 but a depot of drugs. In tracing the successive steps by which it has become 

 the most magnificent of collections, its historian recalls the difficulties of every 

 sort which were to l)e surmounted for the establishment of instruction in natural 

 history, independent of that in medicine, and the petty war which it was ne- 

 cessary to sustain against the Faculty, who could not tolerate the introduction of 

 chemistry, the object of one of the new chairs, into the course of instruction, 

 as being, ' so said the Faculty,) for good, causes and considerations, prohibited 

 and denounced by decree of Parliament. 



In 1S04, the chair of materia medica in this same Faculty, having become 

 vacant by the death of Peyrilhe, M. de Jussieu offered himself,* and all com- 

 petition disappeared. As professor, he took for the basis of his lessons the fruitful 

 principle of the correspondence of the properties of plants with their botanical 

 affinities. t " Reasoning, founded on experience," he had said in his memoir of 

 1774, demonstrated that plants conformable in their characters possess the same 



*■ He had, in 1766, taken a very active part in the formation of the Royal Society of Medi- 

 cine, and ably seconded the efforts of his fneud Vicq d'Azyr, to found and sustain a body, 

 then so strenously combated by the old Faculty, and which, at a later period, became the 

 nucleus of the new Faculty. 



t The development of this principle forms the basis of the discourse which he read at the 

 public meeting of the Schuol. of Medicine in 1806. It is curious to see this important princi- 

 ple already distinctly enunciated by Morison : Plantm qiice generis socictnte. junginitur ple- 

 rumquret similes possidentfacultates, [Plantarum Historia, S\-c.) But it should be remarked 

 that this prniciple has only become leally serviceable to the materia medica, when it has been 

 practicable to apply it to groups more comprehensive than the genera, to orders, namely, 

 or families. 



