352 LINN^US AND THE JUSSIEUS 



modesty and unselfishness. When his discoveries werei 

 appropriated by others, he refused to make any reclama-j 

 tion, asking, What does it signify who gets the credit, 

 so long as the truth becomes known? He thought 

 himself unworthy to hold the professorship of botany 

 vacant by his brother's death, and recommended Lemon- 

 nier for the post. He asked nothing and got nothing 

 from the court for his work at Versailles, not even out- 

 of-pocket expenses. 



A. L. de Jussieu was nephew to the three last. He 

 was trained by his uncle Bernard, whose example he 

 strove to follow, and whose teachings he expounded. 



The list of orders or families of flowering plants which 

 Bernard de Jussieu had drawn up while laying out the 

 garden at Versailles in 1759, was printed for the first 

 time by A. L. de Jussieu in his Geiiera Plantarum. 

 Sixty-one families are here enumerated, of which about 

 forty have endured with some rectification. No charac- 

 ters are given, and the families are not grouped under 

 wider headings. In preparing this arrangement Jussieu 

 was able to make as much use as he pleased of Linnaeus' 

 Fragmenta Methodi Naturalis, published in the Classes 

 Plantarum (1738), as well as of the Fhilosophia 

 Botanica (1751), and of conversations with Linnaeus 

 in Paris (1738, when the two botanists were much 

 together).^ It is equally possible that Linnaeus may 

 have picked up hints from Jussieu during his stay in 

 Paris, and that his Fragmenta was all the better for 

 them. Jussieu's general arrangement is : — Water-plants 

 (Naiades) ; monocotyledons with inferior ovary ; mono- 

 cotyledons with superior ovary ; dicotyledons (taking 

 first the monopetalous families with inferior ovary, 



^B. de Jussieu's "Eloge" {Hist. Acad. Sci., 1777) says that he founded his 

 families on the Fragmenta of Linnaeus. Prof. Vines {Clark FascictUvs, 1909) 

 thinks that Ray's Methodus was the foundation of Jussieu's Natural System. 



