This distinction, which within a few years will render natural history and the preeminence of taxinomia obsolescent, we owe to the genius of Lamarck: in the Preliminary Discourse to La Flore fran aise he set out the two tasks of botany as two radically distinct entities: 'determination', which applies the rules of analysis and makes it possible to discover the name of an individual by the simple use of a binary method (either such and such a character is present in the individual being examined, in which case one must look for its location in the right hand part of the table; or it is not present, in which case one must look in the left hand part; and so on until the name has finally been determined); and the discovery of the real relations of resemblance, which presupposes an examination of the entire organic structure of species.