J 4 Baron Cuvier's Historical Eloge of Baron Ramond. 



between the collateral crests of the north and those of the 

 south ; and upon the latter we meet in ascending the same 

 series of beds which on the other we follow in descending. 

 M(mt-Perdu is the first of calcareous mountains, as Mont- 

 Blanc is the first of granite mountains, and, though less ele- 

 vated, it does not yield to Mont-Blanc either in the aspect of 

 the ruinp. which surround it, or in all the imposing spectacles 

 which characterize the most terrible revolutions. " We seek 

 even in vain," says M. Ramond, " in the granite mountains, for 

 those simple and impressive forms, those large beds which stretch 

 out into walls, which bend into amphitheatres, which form them- 

 selves into terraces, and which shoot up into turrets where the 

 hands of giants seem to have applied the line and the plummet." 



Imagination, as we see, always animated his style, but in place 

 of misleading him, as it does so many others, it is a character 

 quite peculiar to his writings ; it seems but to give the truth 

 with more reality, and to transport the reader more completely 

 to the spot, and to place before him whatever the author is 

 desirous of representing. 



It is also to his travels among the Pyrenees that we owe not 

 only some new plants * which M. Ramond discovered, but also 

 general views on the vegetation of mountains, and on the com- 

 parison of the zones with the climates of our hemisphere, 

 which, already begun by Linnaeus, has become in our day, 

 under the pen of Humboldt, Decandolle, and Mirbel, the sub- 

 ject of such interesting works. 



,, M. Ramond himself attached great value to these questions. 

 nThey formed his earliest and his latest studies ; and a short 

 time before his death he republished them in an extended 

 form in a Memoir on the Vegetation of the Pic du Midi, which 

 was the last of his works. •)* More animated, and still more 

 picturesque on this subject than on the other objects of his 

 research, his style often rises to the highest eloquence. 

 Ey^ry person admired in one of our public meetings the dis- 



^'Ptantes ineditesdes Pyrenees. Bnlietin des Sciences, No. 41 and tS, 

 An viii. No. 43 and 44t, An ix. 



t Me'raoire sur la Vegetation du Pic du Midi de Bagnercs de Bigorre, 

 *lu ^ I'Academie des Sciences, le 16 Jan. ct le 13 Mars 1826. It is printed 

 ' in the Memoirs of the Academy. 



