LUnfEAX SOCIETY OF LOy DON. 21 



"With the death o£ ALPnoysE be Caxdolle another link is 

 severed with the old school of systematic botanists, which have 

 formed so brilliant a line from the days of Jussieu onwards, and 

 of whom so few now remain. Biology has now necessarily be- 

 come so specialized that we shall never again see quite the same 

 race of giants which flourished in the middle period of this 

 century. 



The subject of our notice was born in Paris, where his father, 

 the celebrated Auguste Pyrame de Candolle, was for the time 

 being. His family came originally from France, when the revo- 

 cation of the edict of Xantes drove so many of her worthiest 

 sons to enrich the national life and industries of more tolerant 

 countries. He was born on 27th October, 1S06, and although 

 brought up in the very atmosphere of Botany, he was trained for 

 the law, after taking his degree of Bachelier es Sciences at the 

 University of Geneva in 1S25. In 1S29 he received the degree 

 of LL.D. alter passing through the full curriculum of legal 

 studies, and on this occasion published a thesis on the preroga- 

 tive of pardon, of remai'kable power. It may be possibly due to 

 this early training in a rigid scliool of logic that the bent of his 

 later years was so often shown iu deciding technical questions of 

 nomenclature, as well as being due to his life-long career as one 

 of the editors of the ' Prodromus.' In 1831 he was appointed 

 honorary Professor of Botany in the Academy of Geneva, and 

 associated with his father in the administration of the botanic 

 garden, and also liad charge of the botanical excursions with the 

 students. Four years later he was raised to the rank of ordinary 

 professor in the room of his father, who resigned on account of 

 his health and the severe demands made upon his strength by 

 the ' Prodromus.' From 1841, when the decease of his lather 

 threw the full burden of the ' Prodromus,' the chair of botany, 

 and the oversight of the botanic garden on him, he carried out 

 his duties in this varied aspect till IboO, when certain events in 

 the city of Geneva caused his retirement aud the full devotion of 

 his powers to non-ofiicial work. 



The first botanical work of our author was his admirable 

 'Monograph of the Campanulaceae ' (Paris, 1830), which may be 

 taken as a model of patient and zealous devotion to working out 

 a group of plants, in the method of the father's ' Systema,' ex- 

 tended and improved ; of this work Mr. Bentham has recorded 

 his opinion that by it Alphonse de Candolle has shown his right 

 to rank as one of the first of living systematists. From tliis 

 time it is impossible to enumerate the many important produc- 

 tions which came from his pen, they are well known to every 

 working botanist, and need only be briefly referred to here. A 

 noteworthy volume was that on the geography of plants published 

 in 1855 under the title of ' Geographic botanique raisonnee,' 

 ■which still remains a trustworthy guide, although the advance of 

 knowledge since then has made a portion somewhat obsolete. 

 In the ' Prodromus,' besides the general conduct of the whole 



