1 1 6 Development of the Natural System under [BOOK i. 



sufficiently marked to make it necessary to reproduce it here. 

 It should be noticed however that Jussieu begins with the 

 Cryptogams, passes through the Monocotyledons to the Dico- 

 tyledons, and ends with the Conifers. Adanson's claims of 

 priority over Bernard de Jussieu (see the ' Histoire de la 

 Botanique' de Michel Adanson, Paris, 1864, p. 36) may be 

 passed over as unimportant. The natural system was not 

 advanced by Adanson to any noticeable extent ; how little he 

 saw into its real nature and into the true method of research 

 in this department of botany is sufficiently shown by the fact, 

 that he framed no less than sixty-five different artificial systems 

 founded on single marks, supposing that natural affinities would 

 come out of themselves as an ultimate product, an effort all 

 the more superfluous, because a consideration of the systems 

 proposed since Cesalpino's time would have been enough to 

 show the uselessness of such a proceeding. 



The first great advance in the natural system is due to 

 ANTOINE LAURENT DE JussiEU 1 (1748-1836). After all that 

 has been said no further proof is needed that he was no more 

 the discoverer or founder of the natural system than his uncle 

 before him. His real merit consists in this, that he was the 

 first who assigned characters to the smaller groups, which we 

 should now call families, but which he called orders. It is not 

 uninteresting to note here how Bauhin first provided the species 

 with characters, and named the genera but did not characterise 

 them, how Tournefort next defined the limits of the genera, 

 how Linnaeus grouped the genera together, and simply named 

 these groups without assigning to them characteristic marks, 

 and how finally Antoine Laurent de Jussieu supplied characters 



1 A. L. de Jussieu, born at Lyons, came to Paris to his uncle Bernard in 

 1765. In 1790 he was a member of the Municipality, and till 1792 Superin- 

 tendent of Hospitals. When the Annales du Museum were founded in 

 1802, he resumed his botanical pursuits. In 1826 his son Adrien took his 

 place at the Museum. See his life by Brougniart in the ' Annales des 

 Sciences Naturelles,' vii (1837). 



