Antoine-Laurent Jussieu. 13 



remark, in proportion as it approximated to our own epoch. 

 Not to extend, on the present occasion, beyond the limits of 

 botany, the total nmnber of known plants, which, in the 

 catalogues of the earlier authors of the 16th century, did not 

 amount to more than 800 or 900, towards the end of the 

 same century amounted to no less than 2000 ; in the following 

 century, according to Tournefort, they had advanced to 10,000, 

 ^n which, however, the varieties are comprehended ; when 

 reduced to individual species, properly so called, this number, 

 according to the reckoning of Linnaeus, amounted, in his time, 

 to 7000 ; it was to the extent of 20,000 in the time of M. de 

 Jussieu, and it has quadrupled since his day, and will, accord- 

 ingly, amount to the number of about 80,000, in the great 

 work which M. De Candolle is now publishing. A single 

 family, that of the Composite, will contain more than 8000 

 species in this work ; that is to say, will contain more species 

 in a single family, than found a place in the whole vegetable 

 kingdom in the days of Linnaeus. The genius of M. de .Jussieu 

 is nowhere more conspicuous than in that part of his History 

 which he drew from the materials which he possessed at the 

 epoch at which he wrote. The number of these materials has 

 since increased fourfold, as just stated ; and, notwithstanding, 

 there is not any gi'and principle of the natural order, which 

 does not find its place in his book, and scarcely any of the 

 combinations since established by liis successors, of which the 

 germ may not be there discovered. Fontenelle admires, in 

 Tournefort, a classification where more than 1200 new species, 

 which, he adds, 7vere not expected, could be introduced, and 

 without injuring its foundations. What, then, would he have 

 said of the arrangement of M. de Jussieu, in wliich nearly 

 50,000 species, quite unknown at the time the author wrote, 

 have found their place, and almost everywhere, a place which was 

 previously indicated, — a place which thei/ were expected to fill .'' 

 The work in which M. de Jussieu propounded his arrange- 

 ment, the fruit of so many deeply-calculated combinations, 

 was the result of fifteen years' unremitting labour. He com- 

 menced its impression in the year 1788, and so matured was 

 it in his mind, that the printing was begun before the manu- 

 script was ready ; and the author was never in advance of the 



