Annual Report of the Council. 241 



now sleeps by the side of his wife in the churchyard of Mam. 

 He was elected an honorary member of the Society on 

 z'\pril 30th, 1844. 



w. c. w. 



By the death of Alphonse Louis Pierre Pyraaius 

 DE Candolle, on the 4th x'\pril, 1893, botanical science 

 has lost one of the links which connects this generation with 

 the illustrious Linnjeus, Haller, and B. de Jussieu. The 

 father of Alphonse de Candolle was born at Geneva 25 days 

 after the death of LinnJEUs. He was a descendant of an 

 old Provencal family of Hugenots which had been com- 

 pelled to expatriate itself at the end of the i6th century, on 

 account of the religious persecutions of the time. Driven 

 out of France the family settled at Geneva, where its 

 descendants have remained to the present day. Alphonse 

 de Candolle was born at Paris, 27th October, 1806, during 

 the temporary residence there of his parents, but circum- 

 stances obliged the family to return to Geneva shortly 

 afterwards. Destined for the legal profession, he took his 

 degree of doctor of law at the early age of 23 years, when he 

 wrote for his thesis, on " le droit de grace." This early legal 

 training was, however, not lost upon him, and it is doubtless 

 owing to the discipline of those early studies that he 

 acquired the capacity for investigating complex problems 

 in a judicial spirit, and it enabled him in his later life to 

 render yeoman's service in public affairs, when he was 

 elected a member of the Representative Council, and 

 afterwards, when he sat upon the Great Council of State. 

 He might have become a great jurist, but yielding to his 

 father's wishes he abandoned the law for botany. Appointed 

 assistant to his father at the Academy, and director of the 

 Botanical Gardens in Geneva in 1 831, he succeeded him 

 in these offices in 1835, throwing himself into the full 

 current of the parental studies. The elder de Candolle had 



