of Antoine Laurent De Jussieu. 613 



him doubtful ; whilst Adanson, believing his method almost 

 infallible, endeavoured to class them all ; and this attempt to 

 exceed the knowledge of his period has, perhaps, been the 

 cause of many of the unnatural relations which he has 

 established. It would, nevertheless, be unjust not to acknow- 

 ledge that there are, in many parts of this work, affinities 

 previously unperceived, which this naturalist has very happily 

 indicated. Whilst Adanson devoted himself to these com- 

 plicated labours, in order to arrive at the natural method, 

 Bernard De Jussieu, scrutinising nature with a sagacity of 

 which the few memoirs he has published furnish proof, 

 established the principal basis of this method, not in a book, 

 but in nature itself, in the series of plants in the garden of 

 Trianon; or, better still, in the catalogues, which have served 

 for a foundation in the planting of this garden ; for the 

 manuscript lists which he has left, and of which the most 

 complete has been published, under the head of Genres 

 (V Antoine Laurent De Jussieu, refer to many genera, which, at 

 that epoch, had never been cultivated in gardens. 



We have only to compare this simple list with attempts 

 of Linnaeus and Adanson, to perceive its superiority over 

 theirs, and how much knowledge and profound sagacity it 

 implies in the learned botanist, whom Linnaeus delighted 

 in pointing to, as one of the masters of the science. Thus, 

 more than two thirds of the groups established by Bernard 

 De Jussieu remain unaltered, notwithstanding the progress 

 of botany; or have only undergone subdivisions, without the 

 relations of affinity being altered. We see, by an examin- 

 ation of the genera united in each of these families, and by 

 the series which he has established, that Bernard De Jussieu 

 recognised, as a character of the first order, presenting no 

 real exception, the structure of the embryo acotyledon, 

 monocotyledon, or dicotyledon; for it is evident that the 

 small number of cases where he has united in the same 

 family plants which differ in this particular, results from the 

 still imperfect state of our knowledge of the nature of some 

 fruits. 



We see, also, that he had appreciated the importance of the 

 characters furnished by the relative insertion of the different 

 parts of the flower, and that he had made them the subject of 

 a profound examination ; for he has very rarely united in one 

 family plants presenting very evident differences in this re 

 spect; and the order of these families, as well among the 

 monocotyledonous as among the dicotyledonous plants, is 

 founded upon the insertion of the stamens or of the corolla 

 upon the pistil, the calyx, or the receptacle. 



yv 3 



