22 M. Flourens' Historical Eloge of 



ciples of M. de Jussieu made their way among naturalists, and 

 more especially foreign ones. 



As soon as the new social order established in France per- 

 mitted the return to quiet and peaceable studies, a circum- 

 stance occuiTed which suddenly communicated to these prin- 

 ciples a new impulse, and an unlooked for influence. A young 

 naturalist, who had hitherto been hid in a provincial town, and 

 whose discovery, for it was one, and one which has been dis- 

 puted among our contemporaries, and in which M. de Jussieu 

 had unquestionably the honour of a share, published two me- 

 moirs, in the year 1795, the one upon " The Principles of the 

 Classification of the Mammalia^ and the other upon " Linnceus'' 

 Class of JFonnsT These two memoirs were to Zoology, what 

 M. de Jussieu's first two memoirs had previously been to 

 Botany ; they completely changed the features of the science ; 

 and from that period, in zoology, as in botany, the words natu- 

 ral arrangement had their full meaning, and natural arrange- 

 ment was the arrangement founded upon organization. 



Cuvier bestoAved, long afterwards, and upon a solemn occa- 

 sion, a noble tribute upon M de Jussieu. He distinctly de- 

 clared in his Historical Beport upon the progress of the Natu- 

 ral Sciences since the gear 1789, " That the work of M. de 

 Jussieu constituted an epoch probably as important in the 

 sciences of observation, as the chemistry of Lavoisier did in ex- 

 perimental science." I am not, however, sm-e, that this other 

 tribute which the Baron paid him in the first of the memoirs 

 above alluded to, is not still more remarkable. " Zoologists," 

 he remarked, " had no idea of that calculation of characters, 

 of which botanists had clearly recognised the reality, and which 

 one of them has so admirably developed in a work, of which 

 all the other branches of natural history will speedily feel the 

 happy influence, although it refers to one of them alone." Here 

 we perceive the philosophic chain of advancing science is re- 

 knit by new links ; and the efforts of the young Cuvier, for 

 the renovation of zoology, are attached to the work, Avhich had 

 so much improved botany. 



But zoology presents for the application of the natural me- 

 thod, and particularly for the application of the natural arrange- 

 ment founded upon reason, a field much more extensive than 



