ALPHONSE DE CANDOLLE. ' 409 



work of De Candolle. In his Histoire des Sciences et des Savants he 

 attempted in his favorite statistical manner to trace, if possible, the 

 direct inheritance of talent for scientific studies. Assuming that the 

 leaders of science would naturally be elected members of learned 

 societies, he compared the family names to be found in the lists of 

 members of certain societies, and came to the general conclusion that 

 by inheritance it was not so much marked special talents which were 

 acquired, as what we may call general intellectual force, so that the 

 sons of distinguished men are on the whole as likely to reach distinction 

 in different fields of science from those in which their fathers were 

 distinguished, as they were to attain prominence in the same fields. 

 It has however been objected, with more or less justice, to data from 

 the membership in learned societies, that such membership, although 

 presumably a recognition of ability, is not always so, and that an 

 allowance must be made for favoritism, and other human failings, from 

 which even members of learned societies are not exempt. 



The principles which should guide botanists in describing plants, 

 or, if we may be allowed to use the expression, the literary technique 

 of systematic botany, was a subject in which De Candolle was 

 much interested, and what he wrote on this topic was always marked 

 by clearness and suggestiveness. His sound common sense enabled 

 him to distinguish at once what was accurate and practical, from what 

 was vague and visionary. Probably no botanist was ever consulted 

 so frequently as he on the general principles of plant nomenclature, 

 and none was ever more discreet and urbane in the discussion of 

 this delicate question. His Phytographie, 1880, was an admirable 

 treatise, expounding the general principles and traditions of nomen- 

 clature in a most sensible way, entirely devoid of personal feeling or 

 partisanship, a work most refreshing to read at the present day, when 

 one is surfeited with the multitude of writings on the subject written 

 from a purely theoretical point of view, without regard to practical 

 possibilities, and in a spirit of the most narrow intolerance. De Can- 

 doUe's authority in taxonomical matters was universally recognized, 

 and at tlie request of the committee of organization of the Inter- 

 national Botanical Congress held at Paris in 18G7, he prepared the 

 Lois de la Nomenclature Botanique which was to serve as a basis for 

 the discussion on disputed points of nomenclature. Together with 

 the historical introduction and commentary presented to the Congress, 

 they are generally known as De Candolle's Laws, and still serve as 

 the basis for all discussions on nomenclature. He published subse- 

 quently other papers discussing some of the disputed points of nomen- 



