ANTOINE DE JUSSIEU 57 



The latter half of the eighteenth century saw little 

 progress made in Taxonomy, for the Linnaean system 

 was adopted, not only in Sweden but also in Germany 

 and England, with an enthusiasm that spoke more for the 

 reverence in w^hich the authority of its inventor was held 

 than for the scientific instinct of those who accepted 

 and followed it. But in France the sexual system did 

 not take a firm hold. In that country Ray's scheme 

 was the one in greatest esteem, and this reputation was 

 undoubtedly enhanced by the fact that it formed the 

 basis of a new classification formulated by Antoine de 

 Jussieu in 1789 in a treatise known as the Genera Plantarum. 

 No doubt Antoine obtained many hints from his uncle, 

 Bernard de Jussieu, who was the custodian of the Versailles 

 gardens, where he laid out the plants according to a 

 plan that was to all intents and purposes adapted 

 from Ray, but of which he never gave any published 

 account. 



Antoine de Jussieu, like every other botanist of the 

 period, was a firm believer in the constancy of species, 

 and consequently we must not expect from him much 

 more than a re-shuffling of the cards played by Ray and 

 his contemporaries. He divided plants into Acotyledons, 

 Monocotyledons, and Dicotyledons, extending the system 

 pubhshed in the last edition of Ray's Methodus. The 

 Acotyledons included plants like Naiadaceae as well as 

 those we now call Cryptogams. The Monocotyledons 

 are divided into three and the Dicotyledons into eleven 

 classes, all based on the hypogynous, perigynous, or 

 epigynous position of the stamens and petals in relation 

 to the carpels, a most unfortunate selection of a dis- 

 tinguishing mark, as we now know. These fifteen classes 

 are then subdivided into about one hundred " natural 

 orders " or collections of genera, to which he assigned 

 distinctive characters ; this Sachs claims as De Jussieu's 

 great merit. 



In the department of morphology also the last fifty 



