MEMOIR OF PTRAMUS BE CANDOLLE. 271 



MEMOIR OF PYRAMUS DE CANDOLLE. 



By M. Flourens, Perpetual Secretary op the French Academy of 



Sciences, 1842. 



[Translated for the Smithsonian Institution by C. A. Alexander.] 



The Academy has lost, within a few years, three members whose 

 labors have profoundly influenced the progress of the natural sciences: 

 Georges Cuvier, to whom we owe the widest application of those 

 sciences of which probably the genius of man is capable ; Laurent 

 de Jussieu, who seems by his method to have given them a language 

 for ideas, as Linnaeus by his nomenclature had given them one for 

 things; and it has but just lost M. de Candolle, who opened with a 

 brilliant theory the long series of happy conceptions and daring aims 

 of the nineteenth century. 



Augustin-Py ramus de Candolle was born at Geneva the 4th of 

 February, 1778, a month after the death of Linnaeus, two months 

 after the death of Haller, and three after that of Bernard de 

 Jussieu — a circumstance which we may be permitted to recall, as he 

 would almost appear to have imposed on himself the task of replacing 

 those three great men in the service of botany. 



He was descended through his father from one of the most ancient 

 families of the nobility of Provence — a member of which, having 

 embraced the reformed religion, had taken refuge in Geneva in 1590. 

 This ancestor, as well as the father of our subject, had reached sta- 

 tions of much eminence in the service of their new country, the latter 

 having attained, at a very early age, the post of first syndic, which is 

 the highest of the republic. His mother was grand-niece of the cele- 

 brated Genevese, Le Fort, who was, at one and the same time, grand 

 admiral, general-in-chief, and first minister of Peter the Great. 



The infancy of De Candolle reminds us in some respects of that of 

 Cuvier; in both cases there was an intellectual and tender mother; 

 in both an infant of delicate health and the most happy disposition. 



Debarred by bodily weakness from the usual sports of childhood, 

 the young De Candolle formed a decided taste for the pleasures which 

 attend the development of the understanding. From the age of six 

 to seven years he exercised himself in the composition of comedies. 

 At this period, Florian, who was a friend of the family, came to spend 

 a winter in Geneva. "You see this gentleman," said Madame de 

 Candolle, one day, to her son, "he is the author of many charming 

 theatrical pieces." "Ah," replied the child, with the tone of one 

 of the fraternity, " you write comedies; well, so do I." A serious 

 malady placed his life for some time in jeopardy, and the studies of 

 college were necessarily pursued with reserve, but literature, and 

 especially poetry, lost nothing thereby. What he wrote was, for the 

 most part, in verse, and masters and scholars stood always between 

 the chances of an epistle or an epigram, according to the humor of 

 the moment. Nothing as yet presaged the future savant or botanist, 



