xXeViil PROCEEDINGS OF THE 
this work also forty fasciculi, forming four volumes, were published 
during the years 1834-1848. The last of this extensive series of 
works on the Flora of the Dutch possessions in India was com- 
menced in 1849, under the title of ‘Museum Botanicum Lugduno- 
Batavum,’ and continued at intervals until 1856. 
Numerous minor publications occupied the intervals of these 
greater labours, and serve to evince how indefatigably the author 
laboured in the pursuit of his favourite science. 
He died, after a prolonged illness, on the 3rd of February in the 
present year, in the 66th year of his age. 
After his return to Europe, he became Professor of Botany and 
Director of the Royal Botanic Garden at Leyden, and received 
several orders of knighthood from his own and other Sovereigns. 
He was elected a Foreign Member of the Linnean Society in 1833, 
and was also a Corresponding Member of the Botanical Section of 
the Academy of Sciences in the Institute of France. 
In descriptive botany the name of Dr. Blume deservedly ranks 
high. In the early part of his career, his want of acquaintance 
with the literature of the science and with the great collections 
of Europe led him into the commission of numerous errors, as 
has been above said, in the identification of species, in the con- 
struction of genera, and in the reference of these genera to their 
proper position in the natural system. But these were necessary 
results of the circumstances under which he was placed, and of the 
rapidity with which he commenced the publication of his observa- 
tions, before he had had the requisite opportunities for comparison ; 
and they were gradually corrected. as those opportunities were 
afforded. A tendency to the multiplication of species on insufficient 
grounds, which rather increased than diminished in his later years, 
may also be fairly objected to him; but it is his great merit to have 
done more than any other botanist since the days of his prototype 
for the elucidation of the flora of the great Malayan Archipelago, 
which constitutes the bulk of the Dutch possessions in Eastern Asia. 
Never was the prophetic application of a great name to one almost 
unknown in science more fully justified by the event, than when 
that of Rumphius was bestowed upon Professor Blume. 
Isidore Geoffroy St.-Hilaire, son of Etienne Geoffroy, was born at 
Paris, on the 16th December, 1805, and died in the same city, on the 
10th November, 1861. 
Born, as it were, in the Museum,and bred in the menagerie founded 
by his illustrious father, and in: the galleries filled by the labours of 
Cuvier and Lamarck, it is not to’be wondered at that the son should 
