TOURNEFORT. 



t'tioufand livres on Ills r.epliew, as an avowed return for this 

 legacy, and a teftimony of royal eileem for the deceafed. 

 The firft volume only of his Voyage was printed at the time 

 of its author's death. A fecond edition appeared at Am- 

 ilerdam in 1 7 1 8, to which are prefixed the doge of Tourne- 

 fort, deUvered by Fontenelle to the Academy of Sciences, 

 April 10, 1709; and a more ample compofition of the fame 

 kind by Lauthier, in a letter to M. Begon, the patron of 

 Plumier, and the friend of Tournefort. This laft account, 

 in particular, is written with the affeftion and refpeft of a 

 perfon intimately acquainted with the private charafter, as 

 well as pubUc merits, of the fubjeft of his narrative. Tourne- 

 fort is defcribed by him as of the mod fimple though en- 

 gaging manners, devoid ahke of oftentation and of jealoufy, 

 as amiable and exemplary in private life, as he was zealous and 

 €xaft to fulfil his public duties. Befides his knowledge of 

 Latin and Greek, he was verfed in the Italian and Spanifli 

 languages. The abundant riches of his mind were readily 

 £ommimicated, with clearnefs and facility, but without pa- 

 rade, in his converfation as well as in his leAures. 



Of the principal works of this eminent man, we have 

 already fpoken, and it chiefly remains for us to offer fome 

 remarks upon his merits as a fyftematic botanift. He is 

 faid to have left feveral works in manufcript. One of 

 thefe was entitled Topographic Botanique, containing the pre- 

 cife places of growth of the plants coUefted by himfelf in 

 the fouth of France, as well as in Spain and Portugal, be- 

 tween the years 1676 and 1690. He alfo compofed an uni- 

 verfal critical hiftory of plants, in alphabetical order, under 

 the title of Plantarum Adverfaria, in which the remarks 

 of preceding writers were colletled and compared, and his 

 .own opinions fubjoincd. The S-chola Botanica a cata- 

 logue of the Paris garden, we have already mentioned in the 

 biographical article of William Siierard. M. Lauthier 

 removes all doubt refpefting the real author of that little 

 volume, by informing us he had feen a copy, with manu- 

 fcript additions and correftions in Tournefort's own hand, 

 where Sherard was named as the writer of the book. 



Tournefort was led, by the philofophy of his time, to 

 fearch'for the medical qualities of plants by a chemical ana- 

 lyfis. On this fubjefl he is recorded to have left a volume of 

 manufcripts. That it has never been pubhflied is no lofs 

 to the world ; the work of Geoffrey, undertaken, and 

 laborioufly accomplifhed, with the fame view, having proved 

 that no real knowledge is to be acquired by this means, and 

 having therefore fet the queftion for ever at reft. Our 

 readers will find the principles of Tournefort's fyftem of bo- 

 tanical arrangement, under the article Classification. 

 According to this, his Injlitutiones Rei Herbartit are dif- 

 pofed ; and the fame fyftem was adopted by feveral compilers 

 of local Floras, or of garden Catalogues, in the early part 

 of the eighteenth century. Even Liunaus's earlieft work, 

 entitled Spol'ia Botanica, fme Plants Rariorcs per Smolandiam, 

 Scaniam et Rojlagiam ol'fervatie et eniimerntx, the unpublilhed 

 manufcript of which, dated Upfal, 1729, and illuftrated 

 witii drawings, is now before us, is claffed after Tournefort's 

 method. Nor did any great difficulties attend the applica- 

 tion of that method to any tribes of plants with which its 

 author had been coavcrfant. But when the produftions of 

 new continents came to be examined, it neceftarily fell (hort ; 

 as \ye have remarked in the biographical article of Dr. 

 Alexander Garden. No fyftem of botanical claffification, 

 except the artificial fexual one of Linnaeus, has ever proved 

 univerfally applicable to the vegetables of all countries, be- 

 caufe no other depends on parts elfential to the very being of 

 every plant. 



Tournefort's method, however, by its apparent facility, 

 Vol XXXVI. 



the elegance of the parts on which it chiefly rafted, and its 

 great conformity, in many refpefts, to the evident order of 

 nature, though in others it as remarkably infringes on that 

 order ; became, -by all thefe attraftions, very popular. If 

 the more abftrufe and philofophical principles of Caefalpinus, 

 Ray, Hermann, &c. educated founder theoretical botan- 

 ifts ; the method of Tournefort made a great number of prac- 

 tical ones. Yet it is not upon his fyftem of claffification that 

 the fame of this great naturalift depends. His difcrimination 

 of the genera of plants muft alone immortahze his memory. 

 His labours in this department of the fcience are the princi- 

 pal foundation of all that has been done fince his time, and 

 of all that can ever be attempted in future. If he did not, 

 like Linnaus, invent a clear mode of defining each genus by 

 words, no one can deny that he had a moft comprehenfive, 

 and, for the chief part, diftinft idea of the whole fubjeft. 

 He has caufed each genus to be figured in fo able a manner, 

 that his exquifite plates fupply, as much as poffible, all 

 verbal deficiencies. Haller indeed complains, not unjuftly, 

 that Tournefort's figures are more inftruftive than his de- 

 finitions, as exhibiting charafters refpefting the ftamens, 

 ftyles, and other parts of flowers, which, though affording 

 the beft generic diftinCtions, are not taken into his defcrip- 

 tions. Such defefts feem to have arifen from his dilappro- 

 bation, bordering on contempt, of the doftrine of the fexes 

 of plants. He thought the anthers ferved merely to dif- 

 charge an excrementitious matter, or to fepai'ate impurities 

 from the embryo ; though it could not efcape him that thefe 

 two parts were often very diftant from each other ; and he 

 was therefore not much fatisfied with his own liypothefis. 

 Such diffatisfaftion would naturally lead him further from 

 dwelling with pleafure on the parts in queftion, for any pur- 

 pofes of arrangement. He rather delighted to perfift in the 

 difgraceful blunder of the old authors, who fpoke of the 

 male and female plants of Nettle, Mercury, Hemp, &c. as 

 diftinft fpecies, and called the female the male, becaufe of 

 the form of the feed-veffel. It is indeed one of the moft 

 remarkable fafts in the philofophy of botany, if it may here 

 deferve lo honourable an appellation, that when the moft an- 

 cient writers, as well as their early followers among the mo- 

 derns, diftinguiftied plants by the names of male and female, 

 they meant to defignate them, m general, as different fpe- 

 cies. Tournefort, from inadvertency furely, followed them 

 in this error, as well as in every other, relating to the fpe- 

 cies of plants. To that fubjeft he never gave any philofo- 

 phical attention. The plan of his work was to difpofe all 

 the known plants, under genera, whofe leading principles of 

 diftinftion were, with fome exceptions, taken from the 

 fructification. This great undertaking he accomphflied in 

 a mafterly manner, as well as the arrangement of thofe ge- 

 nera, according to a philofophical fyitem. But he was con- 

 tent to colletl under each genus all the reputed fpecies of 

 Cafpar Bauhin and others, judging of their generic charac- 

 ter only, and not taking into the lealt confideratjon their fpe- 

 cific differences. Hence double flowers, varieties of colour, 

 flavour, &c. ftand as fpecies in Tournefort's Injliliitioties ■ 

 It is unfair to blame him for imperfections in what he never 

 undertook to amend ; but if genuine fpecific diftinftions 

 be, as Linnaeus declared, the perfeftioii of botanical fcience, 

 as they are, in fact, the only permanent and indifputable 

 ground of the whole ; we cannot claim for Tournefort the 

 higheft rank as a pratlical botanical philofopher. That he 

 was deeply and learnedly verfed in the theory of the fcience, 

 appears from all parts of his writings, and from none more 

 than his mafterly IJagoge in Rem Herbariam, where the fub- 

 je£t is treated hiftorically as well as fyllematically. What- 

 ever this illuftrious botanift has done, or whatever he has 

 L left 



