BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF HENRY MILNE-EDWARDS. 713 



a substitute. Eecall that to complete liis cursnm Jionorum he was 

 mnde clievalier of the Legion of Honor in 1834, and grand officer in his 

 old age; that he belonged to the Royal Society of London, to the 

 Academies of St. Petersburg, Berlin, Vienna, Brussels, Boston, Phila- 

 delphia, etc., in brief, to most of the great societies of learned men. 

 Honors of every kind, some of them official, others more precious, com- 

 ing from savants his peers in different parts of the world, were contin- 

 ually bestowed upon him, and day after day crowned this long life 

 which had been consecrated to the search for truth. 



His private life was not always so happy ; it was marked by more than 

 one of those painful crises from which no man can be exempt. 



I have told you the first difficulties he encountered from a material 

 point of view, and how these difficulties only gave a greater impetus 

 and energy to the scientific education of our fellow-worker. What 

 happy hours he enjoyed when, refreshing himself from his daily labors 

 in holiday excursions, he dedicated his journeys to Granville, the Chau- 

 sey Isles, St. Malo, C'ancale, and Mount St. Michel, to original studies 

 of marine animals in their native habitat on the seashore, making his 

 observations direct from nature, dissecting fresh animals and sketching 

 them with an accurate and skillful hand. 



These labors were accomplished with all the more enthusiasm that they 

 were undertaken with his friend Audouin, both of them young, ardent, 

 and accompanied by devoted wives who had no other ideals than their 

 husbands, and who sketched and painted in water colors the animals 

 that were captured each day. The Annals of Natural Sciences have 

 preserved the record of this double collaboration by giving a place to 

 their most interesting works on crustaceans, annelids, ascidians, 

 polyps, and various zoophytes. 



Milne Edwards had already explored the coast of Provence and 

 Italy, and in 1831, through his connection with General Trezel he was 

 enabled to extend his investigations to Algiers. 



This domestic felicity was soon to become clouded by sorrow. More 

 than half of his ten children died at an early age. Though he had the 

 happiness of seeing his son Alphonse — first his pupil, then his com- 

 petitor — succeed him at the museum, and become a fellow member of 

 the Academy, and though his daughters, who married, successively, 

 the son of Dumas, gave him the satisfaction of seeing heirs to two 

 illnstrious names grow up around him, still his life was saddened by the 

 ill health of his beloved wife, the partner of his struggles and successes 

 for twenty years. In 1839 she was attacked by a serious lung trouble, 

 which proved fatal at the close of three years in spite of the tender care 

 lavished upon her by her devoted husband. 



He sought consolation in his work and in the friendship of the young 

 savants around him whose studies he directed. Quatrefages, Blancli- 

 ard, Lacaze-Diithiers, Marion, and many others, can bear witness to his 

 sympathy for youth and his constant and zealous encouragement. 



