441 



succeeded his uncle as administrator of the Jardin desPlantes in 1779? 

 and published two memoirs of great originality and importance on 

 the relative value of characters in the distinction of the genera and 

 orders of plants. In the year 1789 he published his great and truly 

 classical work entitled Genera Plantarum secundum Ordines na- 

 turales disposita, which caused a total revolution in the science of 

 botany. To the modification and extension of the views contained in 

 that work, rendered necessary by new observations and by the vast 

 accession of new genera and orders, brought from the tropics, 

 South America, Australia, and elsewhere, he devoted the remainder 

 of his life. His later memoirs, many of which are of great value, are 

 chiefly contained in the Annates, and subsequently in the Memoires 

 du Museum d'Histoire Naturelle. M. de Jussieu was a man of very 

 simple manners and amiable character, of a social and affectionate tem- 

 per, and a perfect stranger to scientific jealousies and intrigues. He 

 attained to an extreme old age, and had the happiness of witnessing 

 the almost universal adoption of that system of botanical arrange- 

 ment, the establishment of which had formed the great object of the 

 labours of his life. 



The Secretary then read the following Report of the Proceedings of 

 the Council since the last Anniversary. 

 The Council, on the 3rd of March, adopted a Report, submitted 

 to them by the Committee whom they had appointed for considering 

 the communications from the Treasury and Excise Office, on the 

 subject of the construction of instruments and tables for ascertaining 

 the strength of spirits, in reference to the charge of duty thereon, and 

 ordered it to be transmitted to the Lords Commissioners of His 

 Majesty's Treasury j who, in acknowledging its receipt, were pleased 

 to express " their best thanks to H. R. H. the President, and to the So- 

 ciety, for the obliging manner in which they had met the wishes of the 

 Board, and to the Committee for the attention they gave to the sub- 

 ject, and for the valuable Report with which they had furnished that 

 Board." 



The Council, conformably with the recommendation of the Do- 

 nation Fund Committee, have granted £50 from that fund to Pro- 

 fessor Wheatstone, in aid of the experimental inquiry which he is 

 prosecuting on the measure of the velocity of Electricity when pass- 

 ing along a conducting wire. 



A letter from Baron Von Humboldt, addressed to H. R. H. the 

 President, relating to a proposal for the cooperation of the Royal So- 

 ciety in carrying on an extensive series of magnetical observations, 

 in various parts of the earth, having been communicated by H. R. H. 

 to the Council, it was referred to the Astronomer Royal and to 

 S. H. Christie, Esq., for their opinion thereupon. The Report of 



his introduction to his great work, published in 1789 : though extremely imperfect 

 and in many respects erroneous, it was founded upon just principles, and was in 

 almost every respect superior to those which had been proposed by Linnaeus and 

 by Tournefort 



