26 M. Flourens' Historical Eloge of 



counts the difficulties of every kind which it had at first to 

 overcome, not forgetting the hostility it encountered from the 

 Faculte de Medecine, who especially opposed Chemistry, the 

 subject of one of the new chairs connected with the museum. 

 They contended that it should not be taught in Paris for va- 

 rious weighty causes and considerations, and because it was 

 prohibited and censured by act of Parliament. M. de Jussieu 

 also brings within our notice those illustrious men to whom 

 this beautiful establishment chiefly owes its splendour, as 

 Tournefort. Duverne}^, Bernard de Jussieu, Vicq.-d'Azyr, and 

 BufFon. He stopped at the great epoch of Buffon ; and it is a 

 cause of sincere regret that he did not advance to the suc- 

 ceeding one, which probably was in no degree inferior. In 

 this new epoch, Haiiy, unveiling the mechanism of the forma- 

 tion of crystals, subjected even the phenomena of nature to 

 the laws of calculation ; M. de Jussieu subjected to laws of 

 another character, namely, to the laws of reasoning grounded 

 upon observation, the new existences which were accumvilated 

 from nearly every quarter of the globe with a profusion here- 

 tofore unexampled ; and Cuvier, penetrating into the bowels 

 of the earth, discovered those generations which had been 

 long extinct. He created an art, by which he allied and 

 united the scattered fragments of these extinct generations, 

 and gave them, by the laws of comparative anatomy alone, 

 a new existence, and, as it were, a new life. 



Nor would I forget any of the writings which came from 

 M. de Jussieu's pen. I find in his Thesis, published in the 

 year 1770, the first distinct ideas upon those multiplied ana- 

 logies of vegetables and animals, and upon the unity, if I may 

 so call it, of the two organic kingdoms ; views which were then 

 nearly new, for they had been indicated previously only by 

 Pallas ; views as profound as they were new, and which have 

 since been so brilliantly developed by Vicq-d'Azyr and by 

 Cuvier. The only production of M. de Jussieu which might be 

 omitted, and whioh perhaps ought to be, since it is foreign 

 to the subject of natural history, is his Bapport sur le Mag- 

 netisme Animal, which was published in 1784. Nothing in 

 this production is associated with those profound and practical 

 questions which were the habitual subjects of the great natu- 



