278 MEMOIR OF PYRAMUS DE CANDOLLE. 



sciences, whatever praise may be due to its boldness, has not always 

 known how to restrain its flight or master its audacity. Even in De 

 Candolle, whose judgment is so firm and logic so sound, there is more 

 than one generalization which surprises, more than one consequence 

 which it appears difficult to admit. We cannot well explain to our- 

 selves how it is that the primitive symmetry, that mysterious key to 

 the whole system, is so rarely the dominant fact, while the habitual 

 fact is, on the contrary, almost always the anomaly.* But, on the 

 other hand, who can fail to recognize the grandeur of so many daring 

 and profound conceptions ? Who but must wonder at so many results 

 obtained by new methods, so many truths which it was necessary to 

 surprise, as it were, by yet unattempted methods of approach ? Who 

 but must be struck at the number of ancient difficulties resolved, and, 

 what is more remarkable, the number of new difficulties which as yet 

 had no existence for science — which science had as yet not sufficient 

 insight to suspect? 



The Theorie Elementaire de Botanique had appeared in 1813, quickly 

 followed by the disastrous events of 1814, when France, after unpar- 

 alleled successes, began to experience reverses equally without a 

 parallel. During the Hundred Days, De Candolle was appointed rec- 

 tor of the Academy of Montpellier. During the administrative anarchy 

 which followed the second Restoration, the local authorities of Mont- 

 pellier, without consulting the higher authorities, or rather, as re- 

 garded De Candolle, in contrariety to the express orders of those 



'••As an elucidation of some portions of the text relating to vegetable morphology, the 

 following passage from an able article in the Foreign Quarterly Review, April, 1833, may 

 not be unacceptable, at least to the general reader : 



" A marked law of symmetry regulates the conditions under which the vegetable struc- 

 ture is presented to us, in such plants as are closely allied in natural affinity, however much 

 they may differ in certain individual peculiarities, those peculiarities always depending 

 upon some modification in the mode of development in certain organs, or upon the partial 

 or entire suppression of them in one and not in the other species Repeated examples have 

 shown us that certain organs may sometimes be accidentally developed in plants in which 

 they are generally absent, or else may disappear in some individuals of a species where they 

 are usually present. It is by the study of these peculiar ' monstrosities' that we are enabled 

 to ascertain the actual existence of particular organs in a latent or undeveloped state; and 

 it has been by connecting the results of such inquiries that the whole theory of the natural 

 classification of plants has of late years undergone a complete revolution The chief phe- 

 nomena which regulate the conditions essential to the extension of this kind of knowledge 

 are the abortion, degeneration, metamorphosis, and adhesion of certain parts. The account 

 of these belongs more especially to the organographies! department of botany, and very 

 little is known to the physiologist of the causes which produce them. The non-develop- 

 ment or abortion of any latent organ in a plant seems to ari>e very frequently from its 

 compression by some contiguous part, or else from an abstraction or its nutriment by 

 another part which exerts a greater vital activity. As these effects depend upon the rela- 

 tive position of such parts, the influencing cause begins to operate even from their nascent 

 state, and long before their form is discernible by us. We have consequently no control 

 over these causes, and their influence could never have been noticed by us if nature herself 

 had not assisted in the discovery by producing those occasional aberrations from the ordi- 

 nary state of plants which are known by the name of ' monstrosities.' That all the vari- 

 ous parts of the fructification are modifications only of the leaf, is demonstrable by an 

 appeal to numerous examples of monstrosities in which these parts may be seen to possess 

 an intermediate character But we are still utterly ignorant of the nature of those pre- 

 disposing causes which are capable of effecting such wonderful modifications in the form, 

 color, consistency, and nervation of this single organj and, above all, such a complete dis- 

 similarity between its various functions." — Note by Translator. 



