16 M. Flourens' Historical Eloge of 



rence of character was indispensable ; for each character, ta- 

 ken separately, might appertain to many families ; it is their 

 combination, then, and a combination different in each, which 

 alone is the peculiar character of each family, and so consti- 

 tutes it. The character of each family, therefore, is not 

 unique ; nor is it arbitrary, as in the artificial system : this 

 character, which is one, but collective, or a multiple, is the 

 assemblage of the characters furnished by observations, and 

 by facts, as the most constant in each. 



It will be at once perceived, that a hght so new could not 

 be brought to bear upon all these families and principal 

 groups of the vegetable kingdom, without the author review- 

 ing the whole of these elements, more especially the species, 

 the genera, and the character of each genus. Throughout 

 this immense labour M. de Jussieu never relaxed ; the quick 

 eye of the naturalist everywhere admires that consummate 

 experience, that happy tact, and that profound sagacity, 

 which probably had never, previous to this time, in any 

 branch of science whatever, been exhibited in an equal de- 

 gree. 



Naturahsts, as already remarked, had, at a much earlier 

 date, perceived that certain families of plants fell into a na- 

 tural arrangement. As early as 1672, Morison had recog- 

 nised the principal traits of the UmheUiferoi. A few years 

 later, Ray attempted a distribution of the vegetable kingdom 

 upon a much more extensive plan ; and he pointed out the 

 great division of plants into dicotyledonous and monocotyle- 

 donous, and placed the palm in the latter group. Finally, in 

 the year 1689, precisely a century before M. de .Tussieu, 

 Magnol published his work upon the Families des Plantes. But 

 neither Magnol, nor Ray, nor Morison, had prosecuted these 

 general views into detail, and, however happy, being scattered 

 and unsupported, they came to nothing. 



About the middle of the 18th century, Linnaeus, to whom 

 Botany was indebted for its nomenclature, its descriptive lan- 

 guage, and its most precise artificial system, by far the most 

 rigorous it ever had, published a series of Orders, or of Natu- 

 ral families, which amounted, in the year 1738, to sixty-four, 

 and which he afterwards reduced to the number of fifty-eight. 



