577 



announced to his countrymen the performance of his il- 

 lustrious friend and correspondent, as one of the most 

 learned books ever published. He humbly conceives that 

 few persons, in any country, have studied the work more, 

 or applied it so much to practice. If he has been fortu- 

 nate in establishing genera, which have not been contro- 

 verted, he allows his obligations to Jussieu, as much as 

 to Linnaeus. The treasures of neither lie on the surface, 

 nor are they to be appreciated by a superficial observer. 

 The foolish contentions of party can neither exalt nor 

 invalidate the reputation of such men ; nor is it the count- 

 ing of stamens and pistils, nor the enunciation of the 

 names of natural orders, implying ideas which do not 

 always exist in the mind of the speaker, that can entitle 

 a pedant or coxcomb to rank as the pupil of either. 



We confess ourselves somewhat partial to the Linnaean 

 notion, of conceiving the idea of a natural order in the 

 mind, rather than to the Jussieuan attempt at very pre- 

 cise technical limitation of its characters. If we contem- 

 plate the generality of Jussieu's orders in this light, we 

 shall be struck with his profound talents for combination, 

 as well as discrimination ; and as we peruse his critical re- 

 marks, subjoined to several of these orders, we shall profit 

 more by his queries and difficulties, than by those defi- 

 nitions, at the head of each order, which are, too often, 

 so clogged with exceptions, as to bewilder rather than 

 instruct a student, however intelligible they may be to an 

 adept. 



The uninformed reader may, possibly, be surprised to 

 see how great a conformity there is between most of the 

 Natural Orders of Linnaeus and those of Jussieu. This 

 will appea-r by a cursory view of the latter, which, after 

 the detail we have given of the former, will more elucidate 

 the subject than any other explanation that our limits 

 will allow. We shall take the orders of Jussieu in their 

 regular series. 



VOL. II. 2 P 



