Martius on the Life and Labours of DeCandolle, 3 



for his proficiency in Latin and French versification. By the time 

 he reached the first class^ in the year 1791, he had gained many 

 prizes by his great faciUty in versification and his uncommonly 

 retentive memory. At this period, when his body and mind were 

 proportionally and very rapidly developed, he entered into the 

 " belles-lettres class," a division which answers to the German 

 lycealcursus, or highest department of the gymnasium. The Re- 

 volution about this time (1792) overflowing the limits of France, 

 extended itself into Switzerland ; the government of the canton 

 of Geneva was overthrown j and the father of our DeCandolle re- 

 tired to an estate which he possessed in Champagne, a village near 

 Grandson, between Yverdun and Neuchatel. The young man had 

 until now devoted himself almost exclusively to classical studies. 

 He had read the great Latin and Greek authors diligently, and 

 with good effect on the development of his judgement ; he had 

 written many essays in French and Latin verse, and knew by 

 heart a great number of classical passages from the literature of 

 these languages. Even at the time of his leaving college, his me- 

 mory retained so perfectly the first six books of the JSneid, that 

 he could go on with the recitation of any portion of them taken 

 at random without hesitation. The study of history was pecu- 

 liarly attractive to him, and for a long time he regarded himself 

 as destined to the profession of an historian. 



Somewhat later he attended to the lectures of Pierre Prevost 

 on philosophy. Logic from the lips of this celebrated natural 

 philosopher, the author of the valuable treatise on the equilibrium 

 of caloric, had a powerful influence on his excitable mind. It 

 gave him the habit of acute and clear thinking, and was an ex- 

 cellent introduction to the different exact sciences, with the study 

 of which he was employed in the years 1794 and 1795. Physics, 

 the department of Marc. Aug. Pictet, had more attraction for him 

 than mathematics. 



Meanwhile his residence in the country, where he was accus- 

 tomed to pass his vacations, had brought him nearer to nature. 

 Without any book on botany, following the guidance simply of 

 the objects themselves, he accustomed himself to the art of ob- 

 servation. At first this occupation had only the character of a 

 pastime or recreation. What afterwards suddenly induced him to 

 devote himself wholly to the " amabilis scientia," was the excite- 

 ment which he experienced in 1796 in the lecture-room of the 

 excellent Vaucher*. 



The number of teachers at the Academy of Geneva was at that 



* [The teacher survived for about a year his more celebrated pupil An 

 interesting biographical notice of M. Vaucher, from the pen of Alphonse 

 DeCandolle, has recently been published in the ' Bibliotheque Universelle* 

 at Geneva, an English translation of which appeared in the ' Annals and 

 Magazine of Natural History ' for November and December last. — A. G.l 



B3 



