34 Professor Macaire on the Life of Theodore de Saussure. 



Sciences of Amsterdam, the Philomathic and Linnean Societies 

 of Paris, the Wernerian Society of Edinburgh, &c. 



In spite of his habits of reserve, to which such a choice was 

 surely doing violence, Theodore de Saussure was unanimously 

 elected, in 1842, President of the Scientific Congress held at 

 Lyons, which he happened to attend. This honour, conferred 

 upon a foreign philosopher, so little disposed as he was, by 

 his character, to place a value upon it, and turn it to account, 

 shews strikingly the high consideration his works had pro- 

 cured for him ; and it was with as much ease as dignity that 

 he acquitted himself of a task which he was very far from 

 having solicited. 



He was a member, from the year 1790, of the Section of 

 Agriculture of the Society of Arts ; he often took part in its 

 labours in a useful manner ; and, quite recently, the attention 

 of the class of agriculture having been directed to the best 

 processes to be followed in making wine, Theodore de Saus- 

 sure occupied himself in a special manner with this subject, 

 and gave advice, remarkable for the practical spirit which cha- 

 racterized it. 



The career of Theodore de Saussure, far from resembling 

 that of the greater part of modern men of science, was rather 

 analogous to that of the philosophers of the middle ages. His 

 was essentially a life of labour in the cabinet, from which he 

 came forth only at intervals, to make known to the world the 

 results he had obtained and matured in his retreat. He pre- 

 served excellent bodily health, and all the vigour of his intel- 

 lect, even to the last. He died, full of days, on the 18th of April 

 1845, at the age of seventy- eight, leaving behind him the re- 

 putation of having been one of the most inventive and saga- 

 cious philosophers, one of the most skilful and laborious 

 experimenters, and one of the most exact analysts the physical 

 sciences have produced.* 



* From Biblioth^ue Universelle de Geneve, No. 113, p. 102. 



