Antoine-Laurent Jussieu. 11 



words, the essential one, or which may properly be called the 

 important character, embraces the whole family. 



There is, therefore, an order, a gradation, and a subordina- 

 tion in the characters ; and the true problem is the classifica- 

 tion of these characters in the same method that the existences 

 themselves are, in their turn, classified ; and this brings under 

 our notice a phase of the science which is altogether new. 

 Bernard de Jussieu, who introduced the principle of the 

 relative importance of character into the classification of plants, 

 never sufficiently disengaged it from the details of practical 

 botany ; but Laurent exalted it, and gave it a conspicuous 

 place as a theory, and by this transformation itself he gene- 

 ralized it, and demonstrated all its important bearings ; he 

 consummated the great revolution which his uncle com- 

 menced, and created the philosophy of arrangement. 



When M. de .Jussieu wrote those two memoirs on which we 

 have been dwelling, the first germs of all that he has subse- 

 quently accomplished, both his uncle Bernard and Linnaeus 

 were still alive. Shortly after, however, they paid the debt 

 of nature ; Bernard, in the year 1777, and Linnaeus the year 

 after. From that time, the first place in the science was 

 vacant, and every one perceived that M. de Jussieu was about 

 to fill it ; and of this he himself was perfectly conscious. In 

 keeping with this remark, I find, in one of his letters written 

 at this period, these remarkable words : — " Circmnstances are 

 ever occurring by which a man ought to profit ; and an occa- 

 sion of this sort occurs m my experience, which it would be 

 wrong to neglect. We have lost, within the period of three 

 months, the three first botanists in Eiirope. M. HaUer in 

 Switzerland, Linnaeus in Sweden, and the third in Paris. 

 There will be a glory in succeeding them, and in obtaining 

 for France that Primacy which strangers have disputed." 

 These words betray the opinion which he entertained of his 

 own powers ; and they were immediately exhibited in another 

 and more important manner, namely, by the enterprise which 

 at that time he undertook, which was nothing else than to 

 subject the whole of the vegetable kingdom to those princi- 

 ples which he had propounded in his memoirs ; — an immense 

 undertaking, whose result has been that great work upon Les 



