370 HISTORY OF BOTANY. 



ficial system. The main points in these characters 

 were the number of the cotyledons, and the struc- 

 ture of the seed ; and subordinate to this, the inser- 

 tion of the stamina, which they distinguished as 

 epigynous, perigynom, and hypogynom, according 

 as they were inserted- over, about, or under, the 

 germen. And the classes which were formed by the 

 Jussieus, though they have since been modified by 

 succeeding writers, have been so far retained by the 

 most profound botanists, notwithstanding all the 

 new care and new light which have been bestowed 

 upon the subject, as to show that what was done at 

 first, was a real and important step in the solution 

 of the problem. 



The merit of the formation of this natural 

 method of plants must be divided between the two 

 Jussieus. It has been common to speak of the 

 nephew, Antoine Laurent, as only the publisher of 

 his uncle's work 7 . But this appears, from a recent 

 statement 8 , to be highly unjust. Bernard left no- 

 thing in writing but the catalogues of the garden of 

 the Trianon, which he had arranged according to 

 his own views ; but these catalogues consist merely 

 of a series of names without explanation or reason 

 added. The nephew, in 1773, undertook and exe- 

 cuted for himself the examination of a natural 



7 Prodromus Florae Penins. Ind. Orient. Wight and Walker- 

 Arnott, Introd. p. xxxv. 



8 By Adrien de Jussieu, son of Antoine Laurent, in the 

 Annales des Sc. Nat., Nov. 1834. 



