MEMOIR OF PELTIER. Hi 



occupied by a succession of works numerous and varied on the most obscure 

 points of electricity. These were never theories a priorij mere playthings of 

 the imagination, but experiments and minute researches pregnant with new 

 views and marked by the most subtle penetration. The returns of the Acad- 

 Qxnx of Sciences, the Bulletin of the Philomathic Society, of which he was an 

 honored member, the public library of Geneva, the Annals of Chemistry and. 

 Physics, all attest his incessant activity. 



''Dj'namic electricity and galvanism, that important branch of physics which' 

 is so nearly allied to the great phenomena of life, were to him the object of 

 numerous researches ; but he directed his special observations to meteorology, a 

 science which so imperiously demands an attentive observer, a skilful experi- 

 menter, and a philosopher who knows how to deduce results from his observa-' 

 tions ; and on this subject he indeed threw light. His works on the electricity 

 of clouds, on fogs, and his fine treatise on water-spouts, wovdd suftice to as^gn 

 him a distinguished place among physical philosophers had he not other claims 

 to the remembrance of the friends of science : I allude to his last works on 

 electrical meteorology and barometrical variations. 



" I shall also call to mind his considerations on ether, in which he rises to the 

 greatest heights of abstraction without, however, quitting the stronghold of expe- 

 rience, a characteristic which is observable throughout all his works. 



''I nmst not forget, too, to cite his experiments on microscopic life, which fonn 

 a portion of his far too limited zoological observations. Studying in them the 

 phenomena of the production and disaggregation of infusoria, he arrived at a 

 belief in the heterogeneous origin of all these forms of life. It is pleasant to 

 follow him in these minute experiments, where we recognize at every step the 

 rigorous method of the philosopher, and in which he studies this infinitesimal 

 life witli a happy dai'ing which permits him to read its secrets as easily as the 

 evolutions of great bodies. 



*' But a life so laboriously consecrated to study, and so productive of fruit for 

 science could not be without its sacrifices. The observations made by M. Pel- 

 tier on the Faulhorn, in 1842, in connection with M. Bravais, laid the founda- 

 tion of that disease which has to-day bereft us of him. From that fatal period 

 his strength diminished, and his body wasted away ; but his mind lost none of 

 its original vigor, and he ever retained his passionate love for science. It was, 

 indeed, during these last three years that he published in the Brussels Archives 

 of Electricity and Memoirs of the Academy of Science his moat important 

 works. 



'' Towards the close of this year his health became more and more feeble, and 

 the disease which preyed upon him soon gave too clear warning of his approach- 

 ing end. He spoke of it without affectation, and with the quiet resignation and 

 calm philosophy of one who feels and understands that the goal of life is death. 



'' His extreme sufferings, the prostration of his strength, his ever-increasing 

 debility, that precm"sor of dissolution, could not diminish the ardor with which 

 he still devoted himself to his favorite occupation, even revising and correcting 

 towards the last the impression of a general treatise on physics, Avhich will 

 appear as a posthumous work, and is the last emanation from his great and 

 noble mind. 



'' The numerous materials he has collected will not, we hope, be lost to science; 

 and only when we reap the fniit of these will we understand the full extent of 

 the loss we have this day sustained. Justice will then be rendered him ; all 

 will deplore his untimely death, but, alas ! without avail. 



" It is but two days since he conversed for several horns with a scientific gen- 

 tleman of Ilouen and the proprietors of Monville on the cause of the disasters 

 of that commune ; pointing out to them, with his usual clearness, the part he 

 considered the electric fluid to have borne in this fearful event. This long and 

 serious conversation, while it aggravated his physical exhaustion, did not pre- 



