1854.] Linnean Society. 303 



the desire of war and desolation, and the great empire of eastern 

 Europe is actually awaiting the onset of our fleets and armies ; 

 when the feelings of these two great nations are excited to the 

 highest degree of hostility against each other, two of the principal 

 scientific societies of this country, the Royal Society and our own, 

 have each selected for the honour of being placed on the list of its 

 foreign members, a professor attached to the principal scientific in- 

 stitutions of our great political enemy. The Royal Society has just 

 elected the celebrated physiologist Von Baer, and we have conferred 

 the same honour on Carl Anton Meyer. Thus it should always be. 

 Science should know no hostility, national or personal ; and well 

 may he, whose mind is devoted to the love and investigation of 

 nature, find reflected in his own heart the pure and holy harmony 

 which characterizes all the objects of his studj'^ and regard. 



Dr. Jean Francois Camille Montagne, who is by birth a Parisian, in 

 very early life entered into the French navy, and was with Napoleon 

 in the expedition to Egypt at the close of the last century, in the 

 capacity of " Timonnier." He did not, hoAvever, remain long in the 

 naAy, but qualified himself as army surgeon, so as to be with the 

 army at Boulogne at the time of the threatened invasion of England. 

 His original literary tastes tended to philology, in which he made 

 considerable progress, but gradually, in the course of his travels with 

 the French army and subsequent captivity, he acquired a love of 

 natural history which has never deserted him, and which is as lively 

 now that he has passed his seventieth year as it was on its first 

 conception. On his return to Paris after the peace, he found that 

 France was dependent on other nations for all information about 

 the Cryptogamic collections brought home by her numerous expedi- 

 tions, and in consequence he devoted himself to that especial branch 

 of botany, and for many years was almost the only person in his 

 native country who followed it with any success. And at the 

 present time, when numerous admirable Cryptogamists have arisen in 

 France, in great measure in consequence of the example of Dr. Mon- 

 tagne, there is not one who surpasses him in the knowledge of 

 species, or in botanical literature, for which his intimate acquaint- 

 ance with many foreign languages gives him great facihties. His 

 works are far too numerous to mention, and though the greater 

 part are devoted to descriptive botany, they are by no means con- 

 fined to it ; and he was perhaps the very first to recognise the true 

 structure of the hymenium of the higher Fungi, on which the 

 present advanced state of Mycology mainly depends. 



I have to apologize, Gentlemen, for occupying so much of your 



