SOCIETY OF PHYSICS AND NATURAL HISTORY OF GENEVA. 299 



ization, are three great works, any one of wliicli would have sufficed to 

 confer celebrity as a botanist. The Kova f/enera et species plantarum 

 Brasiliensium forms three volumes in folio, illustrated by three hundred 

 plates executed with great care. The Ilistoria natundls palmarum m 

 also composed of three volumes in folio, embellished with two hundred 

 and forty-five plates, mostly colored, and some of them representing 

 landscapes which show, together with the aspect of certain palms, the 

 part which they fulfil in the vegetation of difierent countries. Lastly, 

 the Flora brasiliensis, a work also in folio, embellished with plates, has 

 reached its sixteenth volume, and will be continued under the care of 

 Dr. Eichler and the auspices of the Brazilian government. 



Such are a few of the works of M. Von Martins. It Avill be understood 

 from this very incomplete enumeration why I felt authorized to say 

 just now that our society was honored by counting so distinguished 

 a botanist in the number of its honorary members. M. Von Martius 

 was permitted to continue his scientific labors to a very advanced age, 

 retaining to the last the vivacity of his mind and that love of study 

 which enabled him to accomplish so many valuable labors. But it has 

 been our privilege to appreciate in the savant the man of kind feelings 

 as well as shrewd observation through the extracts which Professor De 

 Candolle has communicated to us from his letters, in which hnmor dis- 

 putes the palm with originality, while he expresses his thoughts some- 

 times in French, sometimes in Latin; commencing a phrase in one of 

 those languages and finishing it almost without transition in the other. 



M. Von Martius breathed his last December 13, 18GS, at the age of 

 seventy-five years, encircled with the esteem of his fellow-citizens and 

 the respect of the Jbotanists of all countries. 



The career of Carlo Matteucci was shorter, for he died at the age of 

 fifty-seven years, when a long continuance of his scientific and admin- 

 istrative labors seemed still to await him. Devoted, like his predeces- 

 sors and compatriots, Galvani, Volta, Nobili and Melloui, to the study 

 of electrical phenomena, Matteucci communicated a strong impulse to 

 the science which he cultivated with so much zeal. From the first, the 

 chemical phenomena of voltaic electricity attracted his attention, and 

 he demonstrated, in 1835, that the interior chemical work of the pile 

 is equivalent to its exterior work. He studied successively the propa- 

 gation of electricity in liquids, whether in a state of continuity or 

 separated into compartments by metallic diaphragms. But it was espe- 

 cially by his researches on animal electricity that the name of Matteucci 

 was rendered illustrious ; researches which, first directed to the torpedo 

 and the electrogenous apparatus of that fish, which he discovered to be 

 under the infiuence of the fourth cerebral lobe, were afterward extended 

 to other electrical animals, resulting in the detection of the curious 

 phenomenon designated by him as inducted contraction. These researches 

 in electro-physiology had led M. Matteucci to recognize, not only in 

 electric animals, but in all others, a muscular current whose direction 

 and intensity he made the subject of exact study. Otten in conflict, 

 as regards these delicate inquiries, with a German savant, M. Dubois- 

 Eaymond, he was under the necessity of greatly varying his experi- 

 ments in order to arrive at a clearer demonstration of the phenomena 

 which served as a basis for his Treatise on the electro-plujsiological phe- 

 nomena of animals, jniblished in 1811, and his Course of electro-plajsi- 

 olofju, published in 1857. The death which we are thus called to record 

 is that of an eminent physiologist no less than distinguished physicist. 

 His name was enrolled in our society in 1831, and most of us preserve 

 a lively recollection of his kindliness of manner and of the judicious 



