October 30. THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
WEEKLY CALENDAR. 
M 
1 ) 
W 
D 
OCT. 30—NOV. 5, 1851. 
Weather near London in 1850. 
Sun 
Rises. 
Sun 
Sets. 
Moon 
R.& S. 
Moon’s 
Age. 
Clock 
bef. Sun. 
Day of 
Year. 
Barometer. 
Thermo. 
Wind. 
Rain in In. 
30 
Th 
White Poplar leafless. 
29.692 — 29.682 
50—36 
S.W. 
04 
51 a. 6 
36 a. 4 
9 19 
6 
16 11 
303 
31 
F 
Rooks return to nests. 
29.938 — 29.872 
56—37 
W. 
08 
53 
35 
10 21 
3 
16 13 
30-1 
1 
S 
All Saints. Sycamore leafless. 
29-985 — 29.915 
60—50 
S.W. 
07 
55 
33 
11 a 27 
8 
16 15 
305 
2 
Sun 
20 Sunday after Trinity. 
29.997 —29.926 
60—36 
S.W. 
— 
57 
31 
morn. 
9 
16 17 
306 
3|M 
Plane leaves fall. 
30.159 — 30.03/ 
58—42 
S.W. 
02 
68 
29 
0 33 
10 
16 17 
307 
4|Tc 
Ash leafless. 
30.007 — 29.865 
56—38 
w. 
05 
VII 
27 
1 37 
11 
16 17 
308 
5 W 
Gunpowder Plot, 1605. 
30.030 — 29.960 
56—42 
S.W. 
— 
2 
25 
2 43 
12 
16 16 
309 
It would be a very contracted, depreciating, and erroneous estimate of 
Botany, if any one were to consider it as merely a science, which teaches 
certain marks whereby one plant may be distinguished from all other 
plants, and whereby, consequently, the name of that plant may be 
ascertained. That Botany does teach us such marks, and that the Lin- 
nsean is a system of such marks more easily learned, and more easily 
applied than any other to the purpose of plant-detection, is most true, 
and he would be a very unwise student of Botany who did not make 
himself master of that system which furnishes him with the best 
index to the vast volume of vegetable nature ; but Botany has 
higher objects than that. No one possessing eye-sight can have 
I walked through life in the country, without having noticed that there 
are many groups of plants, as the Grasses, Crowfoots, and Mints, 
which are composed of kinds generally resembling each other. The 
common little grass of our gravel walks, the Poa annua, differs very 
much from all the other known grasses, and they all differ, more or less, 
one from another ; yet no one for a moment hesitates in saying they are 
so much alike that they may be considered as members of one large 
family. It is so with the Crowfoots, Mints, Orchids, and many others; 
nor is this a useless fact, because it is found that all plants so resembling 
each other in their outward forms, are similarly alike in their inward 
qualities. This is a coincidence that pervades all nature; and the cat 
tribe, from the lion of Africa to the tabby on our hearth-rug, do not 
more resemble each other in form and nature than do our plant 
tribes. All the grasses, for example, are nutritious; all the Crow¬ 
foots are poisonous; and all the Mints are aromatic; and this coin¬ 
cidence of form and quality is the same whether the member of the tribe 
is picked in our hedge-rows or within the tropics. To determine 
by certain coincidences of form the plants to be enrolled in each tribe is 
of great importance, and to this end Ray, Jussieu, Decandolle, and many 
1 others, have directed their greatest efforts. If all plants were as easily 
discerned as belonging to one family, and as unlike to all others, as those 
we have named, the task would be easy; but as the vast majority of 
plants are remarkable for close resemblance to several tribes, the task of 
grouping and detecting the true and universally applicable rules for such 
: grouping, is, perhaps, the most foiling task that can be undertaken 
by a mind the most acute at definitions, and the most subtle at 
distinctions. Yet much has been done, and as all that has been done 
is useful, and as we purpose to describe and pourtray our British 
plants according to this, which is called the natural system of classifica¬ 
tion, we shall to-day give a biographical notice of that admirable charac¬ 
ter, Antoine Laurent de Jussieu —admirable, because excellent both 
as a man and as a teacher of high knowledge. He was born at Lyons, in 
1 / 48 , and, at the age of seventeen, reached Paris to complete his medical 
studies, but his uncle was fortunately Botanical Demonstrator at the 
Jardin du Roi, and extricated Jussieu from being lost amid the multitude 
who are annually prepared for dispensing pills, powders, and small talk 
to an admiring village circle of ten miles diameter. In five years Jus¬ 
sieu’s medical education was completed, or rather beginning, if it lie true 
that medicine is best founded upon practice. It was necessary that lie 
should deliver a thesis before he was admitted to his doctor’s degree, and 
the subject of that thesis —Is there an Analogy between Animal and 
1 Vegetable Vitality, proclaimed the direction Ins studies had taken. In 
17 / 0 , then, he was a physician, and we are told by one of his biographers 
i that, “in the same year he was nominated botanical demonstrator in the 
Jardin du Roi, as a substitute for Lemonnier, whose duties as chief phy- 
| sician to the king prevented his executing that office in person. Thus at 
the early age of twenty-two years Jussieu found himself under the ne- 
1 cessity of undertaking the duty of teaching students the essentialcharac- 
! ters of the plants cultivated in the Paris Garden, a task for which ex- 
! perience in details and practical knowledge were required, rather than 
j that general acquaintance with botany which a young man just released 
from his medical curriculum, might be expected to possess. Ibis obliged 
him to study one day the subjects to be demonstrated the next, anil to 
occupy himself incessantly with acquiring a correct practical acquaintance 
with plants. At that time the collection of plants in the Jardin du Roi 
was arranged according to the method of Tournefort; but shortly after¬ 
wards it became necessary to rearrange it. Of this opportunity Jussieu 
took advantage ; he drew up a memoir upon a new method of arrange¬ 
ment, which was read before the Academy of Sciences, and afterwards 
carried into effect in the Garden. The idea of this method was un¬ 
doubtedly taken from a classification of the plants in the Royal Garden 
of Trianon, executed under the direction of his uncle ; but it was different 
in much of the details, and was prepared without consultation with Ber¬ 
nard de Jussieu, who in fact was at that time old, nearly blind, ill, and 
incapable of taking part in any mental exertion. Previously to this, 
young De Jussieu hail studied the natural order, Ranunculacese, with so 
much attention, that he had made it the subject of a communication to 
the Academy of Sciences, in whose Transactions it was printed. In after¬ 
years he used to say that it was the composition of this memoir which had 
opened his eyes to the real principles of botanical classification, and made 
him a botanist. It is here that is found the first distinct trace of those 
clear ideas concerning the relative importance and subordination of 
characters which the author subsequently applied to the whole vegetable 
kingdom. In reality there is no natural order of plants altogether so well 
suited for this purpose as that which happened to be selected. 
From this time, that is, from the year 1774 up to 1789 , De Jussieu was 
constantly occupied in demonstrating to his class of botany, and as his 
new method was thus brought perpetually before him, with all its 
advantages and disadvantages in practice, he was able to alter and im¬ 
prove it yearly. The distinctions of genera, their mutual relation, the 
natural sequence of his orders, and, in addition, all that was written by 
other botanists during this period became so familiar to him, that his soil 
records his having actually commenced his great work, the “ Genera Plan¬ 
tarum,” in 1788, without having prepared more than the commencement 
of the manuscript; and he adds, that he was seldom, during the printing, 
above two sheets in advance of the compositors—a very remarkable cir¬ 
cumstance, if the extreme attention to clearness and arrangement con¬ 
spicuous in this work are borne in mind. It is, however, always to be 
remembered, that in those days botany was not what it now is : Jussieu 
enumerated only 2700 genera, while one, not of the latest general works, 
includes between 7000 and 8000. 
In 1/79, when the “ Genera Plantarum ” was published, the political 
state of France, which put an end to peaceful occupations, and turned 
the public from all thoughts of botany, disturbed the tranquil tenor of 
the course of Jussieu, and compelled him to mingle in the busy scenes 
of public life. In 1790 he was named member of the municipality of 
Paris, and in this character was charged with the direction of the hos¬ 
pitals and charities of that city, which he continued to exercise till 1792 . 
In 1793, the Jardin du Roi was re-organized under the new name of 
Jardin des Plantes; all the persons charged with the duty of public 
instruction were elevated to the rank of professors, and De Jussieu, w'ho 
had been previously botanical demonstrator, became professor of rural 
botany. I-Ie afterwards became director and treasurer of the Museum of 
Natural History, and recommenced, in 1802, his botanical writings, 
chiefly in the form of memoirs upon his own natural orders of plants. 
These, amounting in number to fifteen, were continued in the “ Annales 
du Museum” till 1820, after which time De Jussieu became dead to 
science. He was then seventy-two, with a sight so feeble that it might 
almost have been called blindness ; and he was no longer able to do more 
than profit by the observations of others. Nevertheless', he employed him¬ 
self between his eighty-third and eighty-eighth year in dictating a new 
edition of his “ Introductio in Historiam Plantarum.” This work has 
been published since his death; it is written in elegant Latin, and is a 
remarkable proof of the vigour of his intellect, even at this advanced 
age. He appears to have been much loved by his family, and greatly re¬ 
spected by his friends. His amenity of character was such, that he was 
never in any one of his writings betrayed into a single word of harshness 
towards his contemporaries. He died, aftera short illness, on the 15th of 
September, 1836, and left behind him a son, Adrien, his successor in his 
chair of botany, and the inheritor of the virtue and talents of his father. 
Meteorology ok the Week. —At Chiswick from observations 
during the last twenty-four years, the average highest and lowest tem¬ 
peratures of these days are 53.3° and 38.9° respectively. The greatest 
heat, 67 °, occurred on the 30th in 1833, and the lowest cold, 20°, on the 
3rd, in 1845. During the period, 88 days were fine, and on 80 , rain fell. 
We have always been very reluctant to decide impera¬ 
tively upon the name of a fruit submitted to us for 
detection, because we felt that, being comparatively 
without system, Pomology can only be well known by 
those who have had long experience, not merely in 
cultivating the varieties usually found in gardens, but 
with the majority of known varieties. We knew of 
no authority to confirm our opinions, or remove our 
doubts, until Mr. Hogg became known to us through 
his excellent work on British Pomology, and most 
gladly and gratefully do we avail ourselves of his aid. 
The specimens of fruit we receive are numerous, and 
although of the names of many of them we entertain no 
doubt, yet there are still more, varying, so much as all 
do, witli soil, aspect, and mode of culture, that we fail 
to recognise them until better informed not only as 
to those particulars, but as to others alluded to in the 
following letter from Mr. Hogg. 
No. CLNI., Vol. VII. 
