JUSSIEU. 



563 



ditiori of the maritime force of most of the Euro- 

 pean powers. He received the greatest attention 

 from the late and present Emperors of Russia, and 

 from the Empress Mother. Shortly after his tra- 

 vels, he was attacked by a paralysis of the limbs ; 

 and repaired to Italy for the recovery of his health. 

 In a state of great debility, he had the misfortune 

 to fall down a flight of steep stone steps at Malta; 

 three of his ribs were broken, and his shoulder dis- 

 located ; and on the third day he expired. This 

 took place in 1831. 



JUSSIEU, ANTOINE-LAURENT DF.,* the distin- 

 guished modern botanist, to whom the science is 

 so much indebted for the natural method of classi- 

 fication, was born at Lyons in 1748, and came to 

 Paris in 1765, to complete his medical and scien- 

 tific studies, under the direction of bis uncle, Ber- 

 nard de Jussieu, (of whom a short notice will be 

 found in the body of the work.) The first years 

 of his abode in that city were entirely devoted to 

 these studies, and he terminated them in 1770, by 

 a thesis for the degree of doctor in medicine. The 

 subject of this thesis, and the mode in which it is 

 handled, show the direction already given to his 

 studies, and the philosophical spirit which ani- 

 mated him at first entering upon his scientific 

 career. That subject was, An economiam animalem 

 inter et veyetalem analogia? and it is, in fact, a 

 concise, elegant, and perspicuous exposition of 

 what was positively known at that period respect- 

 ing the structure and functions of vegetables, and 

 a comparison of them with the phenomena of ani- 

 mal life. The manner in which this question is 

 treated was evidently a brilliant outset for a young 

 man of twenty-two; and when Lemonnier, then 

 professor of botany, became unable to attend at 

 the royal garden, in consequence of the duties en- 

 tailed on him by his situation as first physician to 

 the king, Bernard de Jussieu proposed his nephew as 

 his substitute, which was agreed to. Antoine- 

 Laurent de Jussieu then devoted himself, with 

 renewed ardour, to the study of that branch of 

 science which he was thus called upon to teach. 



The memoir on the family Ranunculi, which he 

 read to the academy of sciences in 1773, proves 

 how speedily he had turned his studies to some 

 account, and how thoroughly his mind was imbued 

 with the excellent principles, which, as above- 

 mentioned, had evidently directed Bernard de 

 Jussieu in his attempts at natural classification. In 

 this memoir, which procured for its author admis- 

 sion into the academy of sciences, and in a second 

 memoir, presented the following year, on the new 

 arrangement of plants in the royal garden at Paris, 

 we find, for the first time, the fundamental princi- 

 ples of the natural method explained with perspi- 

 cuity and precision. We there find a just appre- 

 ciation of the grand principles of subordination of 

 characters,- and their unequal value ; a principle 

 unknown to Linnaeus and Adanson, evidently re- 

 cognized by Bernard de Jussieu, but of which 

 Laurent de Jussieu was the first to perceive the 

 full importance, and he afterwards applied it with 

 singular judgment. Thus, in the first of the above- 

 mentioned memoirs, we find this passage: " We 

 have seen, by some general principles developed in 

 this memoir, the affinity which exists between the 

 parts of fructification ; in this affinity different 

 degrees are perceptible : all these characters have 

 not the same value, or the same efficacy in uniting 



* Translated and abridged from a paper by M. Ad. Broiig- 

 niart, in the Anna/es den Sciences Naturellei, vol. vii. 



or separating plants. Some are primitive, essen- 

 tial, and invariable, such as the number of the 

 lobes of the embryo, its situation in the grain, the 

 position of the calyx and of the pistil, the attach- 

 ment of the corolla and stamens ; these serve for 

 the principal divisions. The others are secondary ; 

 they are sometimes variable, but never become 

 essential, unless when their existence is connected 

 with that of some of the preceding, and it is their 

 assemblage which distinguishes the families.'' 



Such, then, from the date of 1773, were the 

 fundamental principles by which Antoine-Laurent 

 de Jussieu was guided in drawing up the Genera 

 Plantarum. They are expressed with much pre- 

 cision; and if he sometimes deviates from them, 

 it may be perceived that he does so as a concession 

 to facility of study, or to the old systems, rather 

 than from real conviction. Thus in the memoir 

 read in 1774 on the new arrangement in the Gar- 

 den of Plants, he has evidently departed from the 

 rigorous principle of the insertions, as Bernard de 

 Jussieu had admitted them in the catalogues of 

 Trianon, by dividing the dicotyledones into ape- 

 tales, monopetales, and polypetales ; but we have 

 only to read his memoir to perceive, that his only 

 object was to multiply the great classes, and to 

 establish some relations between the new order 

 and the method of Tournefort which it replaced, 

 and which was generally known, not only to the 

 pupils, but to the majority of the botanists of that 

 era. We must not therefore lose sight of the ori- 

 gin of this part of Jussieu's classification when 

 we wish to appreciate the method followed in the 

 Genera Plantarum, which does not sensibly differ 

 from it. 



From this period up to 1785, Antoine-Laurent 

 de Jussieu always arranged the plants in the bo- 

 tanic garden according to this method. The lists 

 used in his demonstrations, worn out by use, often 

 renewed, covered with notes and additions, and at 

 last presenting not only the list of the genera and 

 species cultivated, but the characters of the families 

 and most frequently those of the genera concisely 

 and perspicuously indicated, all show that these 

 eleven years were diligently employed in bringing 

 his natural method nearer perfection. From the 

 year 1770, Bernard de Jussieu, now seventy-one 

 years of age, ceased entirely to take any charge of 

 the garden, which he wholly entrusted to his 

 nephew; his health, and particularly his sight, be- 

 'came feeble, and in 1777, after having experienced 

 several attacks of apoplexy, he finished his long 

 career a career which had in reality so much in- 

 fluence on the progress of botany, although in ap- 

 pearance it had been productive of little. 



A comparison of dates will suffice to show what 

 portions of the natural method, as explained in the 

 Genera Plantarum of 1789, are due to Bernard de 

 Jussieu, and what to his nephew. The arrange- 

 ment at Trianon, formed in 1759, proves that the 

 classification of the families according to the coty- 

 ledons and the insertion of the stamens, is due to 

 Bernard de Jussieu ; Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu, 

 while studying this series, and receiving his early 

 botanical education from his uncle, probably drewup 

 the first principles of the science; but everything 

 proves that the influence of Bernard de Jussieu on 

 the works of his nephew is limited to this. In 

 fact, Bernard de Jussieu's three note-books relative 

 to the order of the garden at Trianon, contain not 

 a single character either of the classes, families, or 

 genera ; there is not even an indication of any of 

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