SOCIETY OF PHYSICS AND NATURAL HISTORY, OF GENEVA. 359 



He foiiglit against it, accordiug to his custom, witli au extraordiuary eu- 

 ergy, denyiug iiitaself driuks, and submittiug to a treatment whicli the 

 physicians believed to be beyond the endurance of a patient. He died 

 the 31st of May, at Sienue, on his return voyage, at the age of thirty- 

 nine years, just at the time when we all had reason to hope that it would 

 not be long before we should again welcome him to our midst. 



The death of Claparede has taken from Geneva one of the finest 

 flowers from her scientific crown, and from our Academy one of its 

 most illustrious professors. The sorrow of his death will extend beyond 

 the extreme limit of our city, and be felt wherever science is cultivated. 

 Claparede was one of those men who make a mark in the intellectual 

 life of a country and who seem predestined to be the founder of a school. 

 We recognize in him a combination of faculties rarely found united in 

 the same individual, an extraordinary facility to assimilate the labors 

 of others, a prodigious memory, great quickness of concoi)tion, and a 

 certainty of observation which was never at fault. To these essential 

 faculties were joined all the accessory qualities which facilitate work in 

 the domain of natural sciences. He excelled in the art of fine prepara- 

 tions 5 he handled the brush with as much talent as the surgeon's knife, 

 and drew himself the plates of his work. He understood all the lan- 

 guages of Europe outside of the Slavonic tongues ; his studies were im.- 

 mense and redundant, though he made but few notes; his erudition 

 was really wonderful. The largeness of his views struck all who 

 approached him, and his instructions had a fascinating attractiveness, 

 though nothing was sacrificed to eloquence. His conversation was 

 always learned upon almost any subject, for it would have been dif- 

 ficult to find a specialty, scientific or literary, even among those most 

 foreign from his ordinary studies, in which he could be taken unawares. 



As for us, gentlemen, it is not only a philosopher whom we mourn, 

 but a tried and devoted friend ; a man of uprightness, one who, besides 

 the genius of science, possessed also all the generous qualities of the heart. 

 I can only regret, in concluding, that the remembrance of his life among . 

 us should not be recorded in our annals by a pen more worthy than mine. 



