2 M. Flourens' Historical Eloge of 



science, as Linnaeus, at a later period, conferred upon it its 

 nomenclature. Antoine being required to devote a large 

 share of his attention to the laborious duties of the healing 

 art, in which he excelled, did not perform for botany those 

 distinguished services which his ready and precocious genius 

 gave reason to expect. He, however, called his second brother 

 Bernard to supply his lack of service, and by this judicious step 

 probably did more for the science, than if he had devoted the 

 whole of his own energies to its prosecution. After having 

 thus assisted Bernard to commence his brilliant career, he 

 did the same kind office, and in the same way, for his younger 

 brother Joseph, whose life was as agitated as that of liis elder 

 brother's was tranquil, and who abandoned his native land for 

 Peru in the year 1735. He then accompanied, in the character 

 of botanist, the scientific expedition which the Academy sent to 

 the Equator, there to measm-e a degree of the meridian, and thus, 

 by direct experiment, to settle the famous and long-debated 

 question of the figure of the earth. Joseph Jussieu was a 

 bright example of all that courage, and patience, and devoted- 

 ness to science could accomplish ; nor less so of the sad cha- 

 racteristic of the scientific heroism of modern times, which, in 

 every quai'ter of the globe, exhibits the tombs of its most as- 

 siduous votaries. Detained at first, by the curiosity which 

 those rich and novel regions inspired ; and afterwards by the 

 inhabitants, who, afflicted with a fatal epidemic, would not 

 dispense with the services of so able a physician ; he returned 

 to France, after thirty-six years of most fatiguing service, 

 broken down alilce in body and mind, having even become 

 oblivious of what he had accomplished, — thus estabHshing by 

 so many trials and misfortunes, his claim to the title which Con- 

 dorcet conferred on him, the Botanical Martyr. Of these three 

 brothers, the only one who produced on botany, and, through 

 botany, upon the whole of natm'al history, one of those strik- 

 ing influences which mark an epoch m science, was Bernard. 

 Whilst all the othur French botanists, commencing with his 

 brother Antoine, were, with timid step, following the traces of 

 Tournefort, he opened up a new path previously untrod, and 

 in which no one has advanced so far as his nephew, M. 

 Laurent de Jussieu, the subject of the present memoir. 



