THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 49 



served in the Adansonia or Calabash tree of Africa, was so cumberous 

 and had such a barbarous nomenclature that it never found many 

 supporters, and the fame of being called the founder of the natural 

 system of botany has fallen to Antoine Laurent de Jussieu, to whom 

 more than any other person the honor may be ascribed. This Jus- 

 sieu, who was born at Lyons, France, in 1748, was the nephew of 

 the Bernard de Jussieu mentioned before, whose pupil and assistant 

 he became when still a youth. Like most of the distinguished early, 

 and indeed later, botanists, this great genius had adopted the profes- 

 sion of medicine, to which even yet botany was only considered an 

 accessory science^ and the first few years of his life in Paris were de- 

 voted to the study of it. Afterwards appointed demonstrator of botany 

 at the Jardin du Roi, now the Jardin des Plantes, he thenceforth gave 

 his entire time and energy to his favorite science, and especially to 

 the conditions necessary to the formation of a natural system. 

 After nineteen years patient labor he published, in 1789, his 

 " Genera Plantarum Secundem Ordines Naturales Disposita," in 

 which one hundred natural orders of plants were first established 

 and defined by proper characters, nearly all known genera being 

 arranged under them. His primary division of the vegetable king- 

 dom was into Acotyledones, Monocotyledones, and Dicotyledones, 

 which were again subdivided into fifteen classes. The reception 

 accorded to the system of Jussieu was not nearly as cordial as to 

 that of Linnaeus, the two systems being regarded as rivals, and 

 many works were published endeavoring to show that the method 

 of the former was not more natural than the Linnaean, while inferior 

 as an artificial one. 



The next great systematist was Augustine Pyramme de Can- 

 dolle, another member of the medical profession, who was born at 

 Geneva, in 1778, a year made memorable by the death of Linnaeus, 

 an event which occurred only about three weeks before the birth of 

 one who stands only second to him in the same department of 

 science. In his " Principes de Botanique " prefixed to the " Flore 

 Francaise," published in 1805, he reversed the order of Jussieu, 

 which proceeded from the lower to the higher forms of vegetable 

 life, and began with the latter. On account of its convenience this 

 order has been commonly followed ever since. In the Candollean 

 system the primary division is into Vascular (more properly Phaen- 

 ogamous) plants, and Cellular (more properly Cryptogamous) plants. 



