230 EARLY STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE ANATOMY 



(4) Geoflfroy the younger (Claude Joseph, 1685-1752) 

 was younger brother to Etienne Frangois Geoffroy, and 

 uncle to ;6tienne Louis Geoffroy, who described the 

 insects of Paris. 



(5) Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1656-1708), nephew 

 to the great physician, Fagon, was a celebrated botanist, 

 professor of botany at the Jardin du Roi. He was a 

 great traveller, who explored the Alps, the Pyrenees, 

 Greece and Asia Minor in search of plants. In this and 

 other ways he acquired a great knowledge of flowers, 

 though he was only superficially acquainted with their 

 structure ; he rejected, for instance, the sexuality of 

 flowering plants. His system, which was long popular, 

 and was only driven out by the Sexual System of 

 Linnaeus, was founded on the general form of the 

 flower. Like Ray, Tournefort retained the old division 

 into trees and herbs ; he abandoned or else overlooked 

 Ray's division into Monocotyledons and Dicotyledons. 

 His classification was methodically exhibited ; the 

 genera, which he was long thought to have invented, 

 had their characters clearly set forth, while figures of 

 the flower and fruit of every genus gave welcome 

 help to the reader. He succeeded also in retaining 

 a number of natural families which had been estab- 

 lished by his predecessors. Tournefort's patron, the 

 abb^ Bignon, is commemorated by our Bignonia (so 

 named by Tournefort) ; Aubriet, the artist who accom- 

 panied him to the east, and who drew the beautiful 

 figures of plants for his Elements of Botany, by our 

 Aubretia. 



(6) During the first half of the eighteenth century 

 Reaumur (see p. 245) was a leading contributor to the 

 Memoires de V Academic des Sciences, discoursing upon 

 the growth of molluscan shells, the locomotion of 



