Obituary. 723 



" The last six sorts are good kitchen apples, particularly the Bedfordshire 

 foundling." — R. T. Chrysanthemums : Queen (Nos. 70. and 79.), and Stan- 

 hopes eburnea. 



Medals mvarded. A silver Knightian medal to Mr. Green, for Columnea 

 scandens ; to Messrs. Rollisson, for Oncldium crfspum ; and to R. Durant, 

 Esq., for pine-apples. 



Art. VII. Obituary. 



The following notice, understood to be written by Dr. Lindley, is taken from 

 the Athencoum. A biography, somewhat more in detail, will be found in the 

 French journal Hermes, for Sept. 24'. 1836. 



" Jussieu. — The French newspapers have announced the death, at the age 

 of eighty-nine, of the celebrated botanist, M. Antoine Laurent de Jussieu. 

 We cannot suffer this melancholy event to pass by without offering our hum- 

 ble tribute to the memory of so excellent a man, and profound a philosopher, 

 — the great and successful antagonist of Linnaeus in his favourite field of 

 natural history, and the founder of the present school of systematic botany. 

 Called, at the early age of twenty-two, to assume the duties of botanical 

 demonstrator in the Jardin du Eoi, in room of Lemonnier, the physician of 

 Louis XVI., Jussieu was led, from the very beginning of his career, to oc- 

 cupy himself with the affinities and analogies of plants ; and he speedily 

 acquired a knowledge of such subjects far beyond that of his day. He saw 

 clearly that the artificial system of Linnaeus was more specious than solid, 

 and that it had the intolerable fault of leading those who adopted it to a 

 superficial and unphilosophical mode of studying. At the same time, he was 

 not less alive to the defects of the systems of his countrymen, Tournefort 

 and Adanson, which were the only natural methods of arrangement at that 

 time known ; for the works of Ray, upon which they were founded, iiad be- 

 come obsolete. This led Jussieu to investigate for himself the principles 

 upon which the mutual relations of plants are to be determined; and, after 

 nineteen years of study, he found himself able to lay before the world his 

 ideas, in his celebrated Genera Plantarum, which at once elevated its author 

 to the highest rank among botanists, and created a new era in science; for 

 it reduced to a definite form all those important circumstances upon which 

 natural affinity depends, and proved that the points which Linnasus had found 

 inappreciable and intangible were susceptible of being clearly stated and 

 methodically disposed. The possibility of doing this had been genei'ally dis- 

 believed; and that was one of the greatest causes of the slow progress of 

 systematic botany previously to 1789, the year in which the Genera appeared. 

 From that time forward it advanced with rapid strides, in those countries 

 where men were to be found capable of appreciating the profound views of 

 its learned author. In England it met with little notice till the year 1810, 

 when Brown's Prodromus of the New Holland Flora was ushereti into the 

 world. Up to that time, botany, under the evil influence of a self-created 

 leader, was with us in a state of torpor. As soon as the principles of Jussieu 

 and his follower, Brown, began to become known, they spread rapidly in this 

 country, and the science from that period began to revive. The Genera 

 Plantarum was the only special work that its author ever published. All 

 that he subsequently produced consisted of separate memoirs upon parts of 

 his great work, in which he altered, or added to, what he had therein stated, 

 or proposed improvements, as his sources of knowledge became more ex- 

 tended. For many years he has been dead to science, in consequence of the 

 failure of his eyesight ; and has been exclusively occupied in an exemplary 

 attention to his duties in private life ; while his chair of botany has been 

 worthily filled by his son Adrien, who inherits the talent and reputation of his 



