14 M. Flourens' Historical Eloge of 



printer above two or three leaves. To this we may add, that 

 the first sheets had been printed without those Notes placed 

 at the close of the characters of the families, which are, 

 perhaps, the most acute and profound parts of the whole book. 

 M. de Jussieu ordered all these sheets to be destroyed, not 

 recoiling from a resolution which would have been most dis- 

 tressing in a common work ; he felt that his would be im- 

 mortal. The impression, and consequently, the compilation, 

 — for they advanced together, — lasted for fifteen months, and 

 the work was published in the month of July 1789. It opens 

 by that celebrated Introduction, in which the author anew 

 developes, and on this occasion, in their true order, those 

 great principles which he had already established in his two 

 memoirs of 1773 and 1774. Here, these principles form a 

 complete body of doctrine. A study of fifteen years could not 

 but have imparted to it lucidit}^ concatenation, and strength : 

 in it we find that the author, by his reflections, by his expe- 

 rience, and by his deep meditations, ascends to the very highest 

 rules of the art of arrangement, and that he connects this art 

 with a new science, — a science which he himself had created, 

 — the science of characters. 



Two facts predominate over every idea which relates to the 

 natural method : the one is the very subordination of characters. 

 By taking assistance, in turns, from reason and experience, 

 M. de Jussieu determined, as we liaA^e seen, the importance 

 of organs from their function ; and, when this function was 

 unknown, he determined it from then- constancy ; an ingenious 

 plan, by which a fact in the valuation, which is often im- 

 possible, generally difficult, and almost always obscure, at all 

 events, in the present state of botanical knowledge, namely, 

 the function of an organ, is skilfully transformed into this 

 other, namely, its constancy, a valuation which is always simple, 

 easy, and apparent. The second fundamental fact of the 

 natural method is, the adjustment of the characters to the 

 groups. In the artificial methods, a character is first selected 

 out from all the others, and the species are then submitted to 

 this character. In the natural method, the proceeding is the 

 very reverse ; the character is submitted to the species. Sys- 

 tematic authors descend from classes to genera, and from 



