XCviii PROCEEDINGS OE THE 



this work also forty fasciculi, forming four volumes, were published 

 during the years 1834-1848. The last of this extensive series of 

 works on the Flora of the Dutch possessions in India was com- 

 menced in 1849, ixnder the title of ' Museum Botanicum Lugduno- 

 Batavum,' and continued at intervals until 1856. 



Numerous minor publications occupied the intervals of these 

 greater labours, and serve to evince how indefatigably the author 

 laboured in the pursuit of his favourite science. 



He died, after a prolonged illness, on the 3rd of February in the 

 present year, in the 66th year of his age. 



After his return to Europe, he became Professor of Botany and 

 Director of the Royal Botanic Garden at Leyden, and received 

 several orders of knighthood from his own and other Sovereigns. 

 He was elected a Foreign Member of the Linnean Society in 1833, 

 and was also a Corresponding Member of the Botanical Section of 

 the Academy of Sciences in the Institute of France. 



In descriptive botany the name of Dr. Blume deservedly ranks 

 high. In the early part of his career, his want of acquaintance 

 with the literature of the science and with the great collections 

 of Europe led him into the commission of numerous errors, as 

 has been above said, in the identification of species, in the con- 

 struction of genera, and in the reference of these genera to their 

 proper position in the natural system. But these were necessary 

 results of the circumstances under which he was placed, and of the 

 rapidity with which he commenced the publication of his observa- 

 tions, before he had had the requisite opportunities for comparison ; 

 and they were gradually corrected as those opportunities were 

 aiforded. A tendency to the multiplication of species on insufficient 

 grounds, which rather increased than diminished in his later years, 

 may also be fairly objected to him ; but it is his great merit to have 

 done more than any other botanist since the days" of his prototype 

 for the elucidation of the flora of the great Malayan Archipelago, 

 which constitutes the bulk of the Dutch possessions in Eastern Asia. 

 Never was the prophetic application of a gTeat name to one almost 

 unknown in science more fully justified by the event, than when 

 that of Eumphius was bestowed upon Professor Blume. 



Isidore Geoffroy St.-Hilaire, son of Etienne Geoffrey, was born at 

 Paris, on the 16th December, 1805, and died in the same city, on the 

 10th November, 1861. 



Born, as it were, in the Museum, and bred in the menagerie founded 

 by his illustrious father, and in the galleries filled by the labours of 

 Cuvier and Lamarck, it is not to be wondered at that the son should 



