AniiJial Report of the Coicncil. 243 



described. The causes which have controlled the distri- 

 bution of vegetable life upon the earth's surface in past, and 

 existing, eras, constituted the problem to the solution of 

 which he gave the best powers of his life, and in due time 

 the fruit of his studies appeared in the two volumes of 

 ' Geographie botanique raispnnee' in 1855. Notwithstanding 

 his numerous and varied writings in other departments of 

 botany, there seems to run in them an inner thread which 

 connects them all with his great theme of geographical 

 distribution, it may be through philology, or anatomy, or 

 chemistry. In this light, his remarkable work ' Origine 

 des plantes cultivees,' published in 1883, is merely a develop- 

 ment of one branch of phytogeography already touched 

 upon in his ' Geographie botanique,' in which latter work 

 the story of the cultivated vine forms a classical portion. 

 Even his great work as a systematist is controlled by the 

 relations which he saw underlying the modifications of 

 the organs of plants through topographical limitations. 

 Alphonse de Candolle has exercised remarkable powers 

 over his contemporaries in regard to the vexed questions 

 involved in botanical nomenclature. He had prepared the 

 way for this by the publication of a philosophy of botany 

 under the modest title of La phytographie, ou I'art de decrire 

 les vegetaux consideres sous differents points de vue.' No 

 other botanist of his age would have been able to command 

 the unanimity of his colleagues of all nationalities, assembled 

 at the International Congress of Botany, held at Paris 

 on the 1 6th August, 1867, in accepting the code of 6Z rules 

 which he then submitted, and which code is still the 

 acknowledged foundation for guidance in this most thorny 

 and complicated subject. If the glory of the father had 

 been to consolidate the bases of the natural system of 

 classification, the glory of the son has been to evolve the 

 laws of nomenclature in the application of the natural 

 system to the denomination of plants. The de Candolles 



