Antoine Laurent de Jussieu. 307 



The last memoir published by Jussieu appeared in 1820, in the 

 sixteenth volume of the Memoirs of the Museum, It related to the 

 family of the Rubiaceae, and presented all the genera arranged and 

 described, after the manner the author intended to follow in a new 

 edition of the Genera Plantarum, which he then projected, and for 

 which he had constantly been employed in providing materials. This 

 last work, published when he was seventy-two years of age, is worthy 

 of its predecessor of 1789: we find in it the same arrangement, 

 the same distinctnessof ideas, the same simple and precise definitions. 

 From this period Jussieu's sight became so weak that he was 

 obliged to relinquish the examination of nature, and confine himself 

 to studying the works of others. His only contributions to science 

 are some articles inserted in the Dictionary of Natural Sciences, re- 

 lating either to the families of plants, or such as are mentioned by 

 travellers under their vulgar names, which he endeavours to refer 

 to their proper genus or family. These consisted of materials collect- 

 ed long before, and we still recognize in them a mind which joined 

 a most extensive erudition to an intimate knowledge of nature. 



We ought also to mention the article on the natural method, in 

 the same collection, published in 1824, in which the same skilful 

 hand has given, with his usual perspicuity, the history of the natu- 

 ral method in botany, and explained the principles on which it is 

 founded. 



Finally, in the last years of his life, from the date of 1826, his 

 duties relative to the Museum of Natural History having been un- 

 dertaken by a son worthy of such a father, he passed a great part 

 of the year in the country, and divided his time between the read- 

 ing of the most modern books on botany, and drawing up an analysis 

 of such of his works as appeared to him of most utility to science. 



Combining these recent discoveries with the knowledge he had 

 acquired in the course of his long career, he made them the subject 

 of a new edition of the introduction to his Genera Plantarum. 



In this proemium, which is written in the same pure and elegant 

 Latin as the first Introduction, we find some of the same ideas as he 

 advanced in 1 789, particularly those on classification : but it at once 

 appears that he was a stranger to none of the modern discoveries in 

 anatomy and physiology, for he conceived that they all should con- 

 cur in perfecting the natural method, the base of which should be 

 formed by all the parts of the organization of vegetables. He was 

 engaged almost to the close of his life in completing this work, which 

 turned his attention to his past studies, and agreeably occupied his 

 mind. But his sight had by this time become so weak that it could 

 no longer direct his hand, and he was often obliged to employ the 



