OBITUARY. 



ALPHONSE LOUIS PIERRE PYRAMUS DE CANDOLLE. 



Born October 28, 1806. Died April 4, 1893. 



THE great Swiss botanist died at Geneva, in the old house in the 

 Cour St. Pierre, which, built by one of two brothers who took 

 refuge in Geneva at the Reformation, had been the home of the 

 family for many generations. 



He was born in Paris a few days after his father had been re- 

 jected on his second presentation to the Institute in favour of another 

 botanist, much his inferior, Palissot de Beauvois, and in his autobio- 

 graphy published by his son in 1862 ("Memoirs et Souvenirs"), 

 Auguste speaks of the consolation he derived from the happy event. 

 Two years after, Auguste went to Montpellier, where he succeeded 

 Broussonet as Professor of Botany, but in 181 6, owing to political 

 troubles then rife in France, he resolved to return to his native town, 

 at the University of which a chair in natural history was founded 

 expressly for him. This he held till 1834, when he resigned, his 

 place being taken by his son, Alphonse, the subject of the present 

 memoir. 



The name of De Candolle would always be an honoured one 

 among botanists, even if Auguste had not had in Alphonse a son to 

 carry on his great work and strike out new lines of his own, while, 

 now the son is gone, Casimir, the grandson, a well-known botanist, 

 lives to perpetuate its fame in the third generation. 



Every botanist who has any knowledge of systematic botany, 

 every gardener who lays any claim to scientific knowledge, knows and 

 has proved the grand Prodromus Sysiewatis Naturalis Regiii Vegetabilis 

 which, begun in 1824 by Auguste and finished in 1873 t>y Alphonse, 

 will be a lasting memorial of their genius and perseverance. There 

 was grit in these old botanists. 



Nowadays wlien a man scores a paper in a few weeks or months^ 

 or perhaps the best part of a year, one looks back with admiration at 

 Auguste de Candolle, no longer young, starting, in 181 6, to mono- 

 graph all the Orders of the vegetable kingdom according to the then 

 but little known natural method. When, after five years of hard 

 work, only eleven Natural Orders were complete, including, neverthe- 

 less, two of the most important — Ranunculaceae and Cruciferae — he 



