MEMOIR OF PYRAMUS DE CANDOLLE. 279 



authorities, decreed that all the functionaries of the Hundred Days 

 should be deprived, and De Candolle was deposed from the rectorate. 



What was the rectorate to De Candolle? He was still professor of 

 the faculty of medicine and dean of the faculty of sciences; he was 

 more endeared than ever to his pupils, to his colleagues, to the entire 

 population; but the susceptibility of his character, always so lively, 

 again prevailing, he threw up all his appointments, and left Mont- 

 pell ier for Geneva. 



It is easy to imagine how he was received. The enlightened country 

 of the Trembleys, the Bonnets, the Saussures, felt a pride in regain- 

 ing him. There was no chair of natural history — one was created for 

 him. There was no botanic garden — one was founded, and he was 

 soon pursuing the scarcely interrupted course of his lessons and his 

 labors. Nor were these long in reflecting a new lustre on Geneva. 



In 1827 appeared the Organographie Vegetate, a work which in 

 substance, is but a reproduction of the Theorie Elementaire, but with 

 an extraordinary extension and development of its doctrines. In 

 1832 the Pliysiologie Vegetah made its appearance, and was imme- 

 diately crowned by the Royal Society of London with the high prize 

 which it had just instituted — a distinction due alike to the wide and 

 elevated views, the superior method, and the lucid expositions of this 

 admirable work. The year 1817 had seen the first volume of the 

 Syxfeme Nature!, des Vegetaux; the second appeared in 1820. 



Let us pass now to another order of facts and ideas, in order to 

 exhibit the merits of De Candolle under a new aspect. 



The ancients were acquainted with but a small number of plants; 

 Theophrastus, the most learned of them in this matter, having reck- 

 oned but five hundred. Many centuries after Theophrastus, Tourne- 

 fort counted ten thousand, but without separating varieties from 

 species. Linnaeus, in rendering one of the most important services 

 to botany by separating species from varieties, reduced the number 

 of species, properly so called, to seven thousand. 



When, about the year 1815, De Candolle conceived the design of 

 drawing up a complete catalogue of the vegetable kingdom, the num- 

 ber of known species scarcely amounted to more than twenty- five 

 thousand. But no sooner had the general peace of 1815 opened the 

 entire world to the researches of travellers, than every year witnessed 

 the arrival of vast numbers of unknown plants from all quarters. De 

 Candolle, in a paper published in 1817, already counted fifty-seven 

 thousand species. "An immense host," he added, " where order 

 the most methodical and natural can alone avoid confusion ! Marvel- 

 lous fecundity, which might abate the courage of the botanist, if the 

 first sentiment were not that of admiration for the cause of this count- 

 less variety ! Would that botanists might draw from these calcula- 

 tions the conclusion that much remains to be accomplished; that there 

 is fame to be acquired by all ; and that consequently it is fitting neither 

 to sleep, as if all were done, nor to be jealous of one another, as if 

 nothing remained to do." 



Thus in two years, from 1815 to 1817, the number of known vege- 

 tables had more than doubled. In 1810 this number, according to 



