24 The Science of Life. 



have vied with one another as to the number of plants 

 which they could name, and the precision 

 often becoming- preciosity with which they 

 Natural could describe them, a qualitative advance 



oystem. , i < 



towards a natural system of classification 

 was made by others who discerned and developed the 

 more esoteric doctrines of their master. The establish- 

 ment of a classification based on genuine structural 

 resemblances was the outcome of the labours of a long 

 succession of workers from the Jussieus, Joseph Gart- 

 ner, Auguste Pyrame de Candolle, and Robert Brown, 

 to Endlicher and Lindley, and the systematists of to- 

 day. For more than a hundred years after Linnaeus, 

 the classification slowly grew in stability and reality, 

 but quite unillumined by any thought of evolution. It 

 was helped by the study of development, and by the 

 increased precision of anatomical analysis, but it 

 remained strictly Linnaean in one sense at least that 

 it was dominated by the dogma of the constancy of 

 species. 



Bernard de Jussieu (1699-1777), memorable to the 

 zoologist for having, along with Peissonel, first de- 

 nounced the prevalent view that corals were plants, 

 laid out the beds in the royal garden of Trianon, so as 

 to express his views on the natural affinities of the 

 orders. These views were based on Linnets fragment 

 of a natural system, and they doubtless led on to his 

 nephew's much stronger work. 



Antoine Laurent de Jussieu (1748-1836) is forever 

 memorable for his Genera Plantarum (1789), the main 

 feature of which was the characterization of the families 

 of plants. As Sachs says, Bauhin gave characters to 

 species, Tournefort defined genera, Linnaeus grouped 

 genera, the younger Jussieu diagnosed families. In 

 other words, he effected an induction of a higher order 

 of complexity than those which his predecessors had 

 achieved. 



Joseph Gartner (1732-1791) did service to natural 

 classification by his monograph on fruits and seeds, 

 which Jussieu and a few others were able to appreciate. 

 He was one of those remarkable men whose records 



