LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. 95 



the miulng populace. He was lecturer to several of the ambu- 

 lance classes connected witli the collieries in his ueighbourhood. 



Towards the end of 18S6 his health showed signs of" failing, 

 and he died June 13, 18S7, after a few weeks of acute illness. 



Jules Emile Planchon, who died at Montpellier, April 1 

 last, was born at Ganges, Herault, on March 28, 1823. At the 

 age of 21 he produced his thesis ' Memoire sur les developpe- 

 ments et les caracteres des vrais et des faux Arilles,' 1844, and 

 shortly afterwards, on the strong recommendation of Auguste 

 St.-Hilaire, he was engaged by Sir William Hooker to take 

 charge of his splendid herbarium, then recently removed from 

 Grlasgow to a house betu-een Morthike and Kew. Here he 

 stayed until 1851, busily investigating the large amount of new 

 material which was then coming in so freely as to rapidly raise 

 that collection to its known high condition of excellence. Many 

 traces of his life in England are to be found in that herbarium, in 

 the shape of notes and suggested names. During his stay in this 

 country he took his share in working up the ' Niger Flora,' 

 which was edited by Sir William Hooker, with Dr. Joseph 

 Hooker and Mr. Bentham as fellow-labourers. On quitting 

 England, Planchon spent a short period at Ghent with Van 

 Houtte, occupied on horticultural botany, and in the ' Elore des 

 Serres ' may be noticed how fond he was of entering into full 

 details of the history and literary aspects of any plants he took 

 in hand. During the period of 1841-55, Planchon contributed 

 studies on Droseracece, Nympha^accce, and Ulmacea) to the 

 ' Annales des Sciences Naturelles,' a brilliant epoch in the career 

 of that publication. 



He returned to Montpellier to complete his medical studies, 

 and soon after he began to teach in botany. Fi-om 1851 to 

 1853 he was Professor of Medicine and Phurmac}' at Nancy ; he 

 then returned to Montpellier to be the occupant of the botanical 

 chairs at the Eacultc des Sciences and the Ecole de Pharmacic. 



In the course of one of his visits to Paris he sustained a lively 

 discussion with Naudin, an early advocate of evolution, but the 

 debate was rendered one-sided by the almost total deafness of 

 Naudin, who put aside his ear-trumpet when Planchon attempted 

 to reply. 



His im])ortant memoir on Guttiferte and the unhnished Flora 

 of Colombia were drawn up in conjunction with Triana, while the 

 monograph on Ulmacea) in De Candolle's ' Prodromus' was written 

 by Planchon alone. His last botanic publication was an elabora- 

 tion of Ampelidcce, which came out in 1887, and is at the time of 

 \vriting this, the latest issued part of De Candolle's ' Mono- 

 graphise.' 



Although his services to botany -were thus of a very distin- 

 guished character, his researches on Fhylloxera were perhaps 

 more conspicuous, as aftectiug the welfare of so large a number 



