OBITUARY. 
ALPHONSE LOUIS PIERRE PYRAMUS DE CANDOLLE. 
Born OCTOBER 28, 1806. DiED APRIL 4, 1893. 
HE great Swiss botanist died at Geneva, in the old house in the 
Cour St. Pierre, which, built by one of two brothers who took 
refuge in Geneva at the Reformation, had been the home of the 
family for many generations. 
He was born in Paris a few days after his father had been re- 
jected on his second presentation to the Institute in favour of another 
botanist, much his inferior, Palissot de Beauvois, and in his autobio- 
graphy published by his son in 1862 (‘‘Mémoirs et Souvenirs”), 
Auguste speaks of the consolation he derived from the happy event. 
Two years after, Auguste went to Montpellier, where he succeeded 
Broussonet as Professor of Botany, but in 1816, owing to political 
troubles then rife in France, he resolved to return to his native town, 
at the University of which a chair in natural history was founded 
expressly for him. This he held till 1834, when he resigned, his 
place being taken by his son, Alphonse, the subject of the present 
memolr. 
The name of De Candolle would always be an honoured one 
among botanists, even if Auguste had not had in Alphonse a son to 
carry on his great work and strike out new lines of his own, while, 
now the son is gone, Casimir, the grandson, a well-known botanist, 
lives to perpetuate its fame in the third generation. 
Every botanist who has any knowledge of systematic botany, 
every gardener who lays any claim to scientific knowledge, knows and 
has proved the grand Prodvomus Systematis Naturalis Regnt Vegetabilis 
which, begun in 1824 by Auguste and finished in 1873 by Alphonse, 
will be a lasting memorial of their genius and perseverance. There 
was grit in these old botanists. 
Nowadays when a man scores a paper in a few weeks or months, 
or perhaps the best part of a year, one looks back with admiration at 
Auguste de Candolle, no longer young, starting, in 1816, to mono- 
graph all the Orders of the vegetable kingdom according to the then 
but little known natural method. When, after five years of hard 
work, only eleven Natural Orders were complete, including, neverthe- 
less, two of the most important—-Ranunculacee and Crucifera—he 
