28 REPORT—1874. 
followed had, indeed, been formed by Ray, and after him by Tournefort, 
Allioni, and others of undoubted eminence; but it was reserved for the 
master-mind of the immortal Swede to mark out a clear, safe, and definite 
road along the first great ascent, and to fix on its summit, by the establish- 
ment of genera and species upon sound philosophical principles, a firm stage 
to serve as a basis and starting-point for further progress and exploration. 
Such further progress under the guidance of the same principles was indeed 
contemplated and to a certain degree sketched out by Linnzeus himself, but 
the territory forming the next acclivity was too little known to disclose the 
best paths for ascending it. Among the eight or ten thousand species 
known to Linneus, chiefly from the northern hemisphere or from the Cape of 
Good Hope, a sufficient number of genera were exhibited to him in their 
entirety to enable him to fix the relations of genus and species ; but of the 
higher groups, the orders or natural families, too large a proportion were as 
yet undiscovered or were too sparingly represented to encourage any imme- 
diate attempt to define them. A further knowledge of the territory was 
necessary in order to clear the ground for its regular ascent, and yet it was 
necessary to ascend in order to effect its survey; as a temporary assistance, 
therefore, Linnzus devised the scaffolding, known under the name of the 
sexual system, with its artificial and easy though frail ladders, the twenty- 
four classes and their sudsidiary orders. 
The progress was now wonderfully rapid. A very few years doubled the 
number of plants known, and after the commencement of the present 
century new discoveries and more accurate studies of those previously known 
were being published in all parts of Europe in an increasing ratio. It was, 
however, rather earlier, and not long after the death of Linneus, that 
Antoine Laurent de Jussieu, following in the footsteps of his uncle Bernard, 
with a methodical mind yielding but little to that of the great Swedish master, 
having all the advantages of the additional materials at his disposal, and 
having to start from the elevated platform so firmly established by his pre- 
decessor, was enabled, in his ‘Genera Plantarum’ (begun in 1778 and — 
finally published in,1789), to carry the high road up the next rising, marking 
it out perhaps at first rather vaguely, but upon principles so sound that it 
was warmly taken in hand by the French school in the first instance, soon to 
be followed up in this country, and later and less willingly in Germany. 
Among the earliest and most important contributors to the perfecting the 
work were Robert Brown and the elder De Candolle; and their labours had 
_already been sufficiently advanced to enable me, when I first came upon the 
stage, to avail myself of the road thus established and ascend with ease to 
the higher platform. The great Linnean thoroughfare to species and genera 
had long been universally followed, and my apprenticeship to the science, 
from 1817 to my first botanical publication in 1826, was entirely under the 
guidance of De Candolle’s ‘ Flora’ and ‘ Théorie ;’ so that I had no occasion to 
make use, or even to take any notice, of the Linnean scaffolding and ladders. 
I never learnt the twenty-four classes till after the publication of my ‘ Cata- 
logue des Plantes indigénes des Pyrénées et du Bas Languedoc.’ Easy as 
they were supposed to be, I found, for purposes of reference, alphabetical 
indexes still ‘easier.' 
Towards the close of this same year (1826), in which I had thus entered 
my name in the roll of working botanists, I returned to England after a 
twelve years’ residence in France; and although logic, law, and law-making 
were at first the chief subjects of my studies and publications, I gradually 
gave up more and more time to botany, and having spent two vacations 
