274 MEMOIR OF PYRAMUS DE CANDOLLE. 



exploration of the higher Alps would alone prove that the enthusiasm 

 of science has an intrepidity which yields to no other. On one occa- 

 sion, wishing to reach the Great Saint-Bernard by the almost im- 

 practicable col Saint-Remi, he found himself, after climbing the col, 

 obliged to descend a frozen declivity, excessively steep, and termi- 

 nating in a precipice. The guides were before, marking the steps with 

 their iron-shod staves, while our traveller followed in silence. All at 

 once his footing fails him, and sliding with frightful rapidity, he hears 

 cries of distress from his guides, who can afford him no succor. At 

 last he perceives a slight fissure in the ice, and, thrusting his staff 

 forcibly into it, is stopped. To cries of distress succeed those of joy; 

 the most intrepid of his guides comes to him by a long circuit, and, 

 tracing a path in the snow, conducts him to a place of safety. "Ah," 

 said this brave man, embracing him, "no one has ever caused me so 

 much anxiety." 



On occasion of the inquiries, before mentioned, respecting the 

 habits of vegetables, De Candolle, though but twenty-two years of 

 age, had been inscribed by the Academy on the list of its candidates* 

 Adanson said of him, that "he had established himself on the high- 

 way of science." Cuvier had chosen him for his substitute in the 

 chair of Natural History at the college of France, and Lamarck con- 

 fided to him the second edition of his Flore Francaise. This edition 

 became in the hands of De Candolle an original work, which may well 

 serve for a model in extended labors of its kind. He had but just 

 executed it when a vacancy occurred in the Academy by the death of 

 Adanson. Besides the works already mentioned, De Candolle had 

 published an important one on the Astragali; an essay full of interest 

 on the medical properties of plants; researches, equally new and in* 

 structive, on the pores of leaves, on the vegetation of the misletoe, &c. ; 

 and, resting on such titles, might well aspire to the nomination. But 

 it was carried in favor of Palissot de Beauvais by two or three voices, 

 to the sensible chagrin of De Candolle. He had been for some time 

 pressed by the faculty of medicine of Montpellier to accept the chair 

 of botany, which had been successively occupied by Gouanand Brous- 

 sonnet, and though hesitating till now, he hesitated no longer. He 

 accepted the chair, and resolved to quit Paris. 



Was this well or ill done ? To consider the motive only of his 

 resolution, the hasty counsel of a wounded susceptibility, assuredly not 

 well; but if we consider the important results which accrued to botany 

 from his sojourn at Montpellier, perhaps the answer will be altogether 

 different. Would Paris have left him the same leisure for protracted 

 labors ? The same calm for abstract meditations ? The same liberty of 

 ideas ? The same originality of views ? And to say all in a single word, 

 would De Candolle have been as complete^ himself as he has been t 



At the moment of his departure from Paris an embarrassment arose 

 which threatened wholly to disconcert his purpose. On concluding 

 the Flore Francaise, he had devoted himself to a not less important 

 work on the botanical geography of France, Geographic Botanique de 

 la France, and with so much ardor that rather than abandon it, and 

 thus lose the modest salary which scarcely defrayed the expense of 



