414 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
Under a plain exterior, and the simplest manner, Guillemin 
possessed a highly cultivated mind, and very extensive in- 
formation; and being ever prompt to impart, with utter 
forgetfulness of self, his stores of knowledge to every person 
whom he could thus benefit, it may readily be supposed that 
he was consulted both by the ignorant and the learned. 
How many ingenious observations and elevated ideas. were 
gathered from his conversation! The kind of negligence 
which pervaded his manners would have induced no one to 
suspect how powerful and retentive was the memory he 
possessed: but never a book, or figure of a plant, had he so 
slightly glanced at, but he distinctly remembered, and could 
instantly recall and refer to them at need. He was aided, 
in his determination of plants, by a most skilful, correct, and 
rapid eye; and every botanist who has had occasion to 
consult the splendid collections of M. Benjamin Delessert, 
has been delighted by M. Guillemin's obliging readiness to 
aid their views, and astonished with his extensive informa- 
tion. In 1827, he was nominated Botanical Assistant to the 
Paris Museum of Natural History, and as he was able to 
hold this office, along with his employment in M. Delessert’s 
herbarium, he formed, as it were, an usefullink between 
these two valuable public and private collections, the Jardin 
des Plantes, and the Museum of M. Delessert. Besides his 
publications on descriptive botany, Guillemin contributed 
to science several memoirs on Organography, and Vegetable 
Physiology: among them are his Considerations on the 
hybridity of plants in general, published conjointly with M. 
Dumas. In this memoir, the authors point out the facts of 
hybridization which they had observed in some alpine species 
of Gentian, and while they give no decided opinion on the 
theory, they indicate the peculiar circumstances under which 
these wild plants cross one another. 
Microscopical researches on the Pollen.—This paper 
was anterior to, and perhaps indeed, was the origin 
of, those learned labours which Physiologists have re- 
cently bestowed on this subject. Guillemin lays down; 
