MEMOIR OF AUGUSTE BRAVAIS.* 



By M. Elie De Beaumont, 

 Perpetual Secretary of the French Academy of Sciences. 



[^Translated for the Smithsonian Institution by C. A. Alexander.'} 



One of the highest gifts of the human intellect is to lift itself to the 

 contemplation of the future ; to enjoy in advance the benefits which it 

 prej)aies for the after-races of mankind ; to feel itself alreadj' recom- 

 pensed for long and laborious eflbrts by the thought that a measure of 

 glory will, some day, encircle a name which is still unknown. 



It is your noble privilege, members of the Academy, to pay this tribute 

 of the future ; to discharge by anticipation the debt bequeathed to 

 posterity, especially in the case of those whom an untimely death has 

 i:»recluded from the enjoyment of their success; and when a savant, 

 prematurely snatched away from his studies, leaves works as yet but 

 little known, though well worthy of being so, works deprived of the 

 brilliant retinue with which he would in good time have surrounded 

 them, these are orphans the guardianshii) of which peculiarly belongs 

 to you. Such are the motives which have determined your administra- 

 tive committee to call your attention to-day to a colleagiie who, struck 

 down in your ranks almost at the moment when he had just entered 

 them, will leave in several branches of the sciences ineffaceable traces 

 through the labors by which he had earned your suffrages. 



Auguste Bravais was born August 23, 1811, at Annonay, in the de- 

 partment of Ardeche. His paternal family sprang from the neighboring- 

 town of Saint-Peray, where it had enjoyed for several centuries the con- 

 sideration and esteem which have, in all ages, been associated with long 

 traditions of honor and loyalty. His father, born in 17G4, had completed 

 his scientific studies at Montpellier, where he had been preparator for 

 the chemical courses of Chaptal, and had received the degree of doctor 

 of medicine in 1790. Devoted to natural history, he had successively 

 solicited permission to take part in the two expeditions sent in 1791 and 

 1792 in search of La Perouse, but had been stopped by different obsta- 

 cles, and finally by the opposition of his family, alarmed at the first 

 symptoms of the Revolution, by which, like so many others, it was se- 

 verely tried. AYhen tranquillity reappeared Dr. liravais established 

 himself at Annonay, a small town picturesquely situated at the entrance 

 of one of the gorges of the Vivarais, known for its manufactures of 

 paper and for having been the country of the celebrated IMontgolfier. 

 Here he was soon recognized as an excellent practitioner, and for forty 

 years exercised gratuitously the functions of physician of the hospital. 

 With his devotion to the sick and to the welfare of his fellow-citizens 

 was always allied in Dr. Bravais an enthusiastic love of botany. He 

 undertook a flora of the Cevennes and Alps, and maintained a constant 

 correspondence and commerce of exchanges with the most distinguished 

 botanists of Paris and Montpellier. It was in this way that he received 



* Read at the annual public sitting of the Gth Fel>ruary, 1865. 



