MEMOIR OF GEOFFROY SAOT HILAIRE. 



By M. FLOURENS, 

 perpetual secretary of the french academy of sciences. 



TRANSLATED FOR THE SMITHSOXIAN INSTITUTION BY C. A. ALEXANDER. 



This Academy numbered among its members, in the last century, 

 two brothers, one of whom left several useful treatises on botany, 

 while the other is memorable as the first chemist who conceived 

 a precise and practical idea respecting affinities. It was said Avith 

 reference to the latter, by the most spiritual of the partisans of 

 Descartes, Fontenelle, "that he had enunciated in 1718 a singular 

 system — a table of affinities or relations of different substances in 

 chemistry. These affinities," added Fontenelle, "gave uneasiness to 

 some, who feared lest they should turn out to be attractions* in dis- 

 guise, the more dangerous as persons of skill knew already too well 

 how to endue them with seductive forms." 



The distinction of the two brothers became a just ground of pride 

 to their family, one of whose branches inhabited the small town of 

 Etampes. There, in a home whose habits were still patriarchal, a 

 grandmother was accustomed, in the long evenings, when her numer- 

 ous grandchildren were grouped around her, to enchain their attention 

 by recitals respecting her own time, in which the names of our two 

 savans, among their relatives, did not fail perpetually to recur. To 

 these recitals her simple admiration for renown, no less than her 

 quality of grandmother, gave a real power ; so that, on one occasion, 

 a little boy, very delicate and sufficiently light-headed, was prompted 

 to exclaim: "For my part, I, too, should like to be famous; but how 

 to become so?" "By willing it strongly, " replied the grandmother; 

 "you bear the same name with those of whom I have been speaking; 

 do as they have done." "And jow will help me, grandmother?" 

 cried the little enthusiast; an appeal which was responded to, on the 

 part of the excellent dame, by presenting him with a copy of Plu- 

 tarch's Lives of Illustrious Men. 



It was thus that Etienne Geoffrey Saint Hilaire, born the 15th of 

 April, 1772, was dreaming of future distinction, when his father an- 

 nounced that having obtained for him a scholarship in the college of 

 Navarre, he was about to place him there. Here the poor boy was 

 destined to find the path to fame encumbered with exercises and 



* The term attraction, introduced by Newton as a fit word to desij^nate the force which 

 produced chemical combination, was in great favor in England, where the Newtonian 

 philosophy was looked upon as applicable to every branch of science, wliilc in France, on 

 the contrary, where Descartes still reigned triumphant, attraction, the watchword of the 

 enemy, was never heard but with dislike and suspicion. — Translator. 



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