AUGUSTIN-PYRAMUS DE CANDOLLE. 291 
life was peaceful and long: he attained the age of eighty-four 
years, and died in 1820. 
Augustin-Pyramus, the writer of this autobiography, ap- 
pears to have been remarkable in his boyhood rather for 
quickness of learning than for scholarship. His early tastes 
were for belles-lettres and poetry. Specimens of his poetical 
productions, both of his youth and of maturer years, are ap- 
pended to the volume. Of their merit we cannot pretend to 
judge. At the age of sixteen he happened to attend a few 
lectures of a short course on botany, given by Vaucher, — 
who, living to a venerable age, survived his distinguished 
pupil. Here he learned the names of the parts of the flower, 
but nothing whatever of classification, having gone into the 
country for the summer before that portion of the course was 
reached. But his curiosity was awakened ; and in his leisure 
hours he began to collect, observe, and even to describe the 
plants he met with in his rambles, at first without any botan- 
ical book whatever to guide him, and without any idea beyond 
that of amusement or relaxation. The next winter, returning 
to Geneva and to his college studies, he came to know Saus- 
sure, then in his last years, and half paralytic. The veteran 
physicist, while he endeavored to attract the young man to 
scientific pursuits, discouraged his predilection for botany. 
That he regarded as quite unworthy of serious attention. 
Another summer passed upon the side of the Jura, however, 
and the perusal of Duhamel’s “‘ Physique des Arbres,” of the 
“‘ Researches upon Leaves” of Pastor Bonnet (a friend of his 
father), also of Hale’s “‘ Vegetable Statics,” which he painfully 
translated from the English, and finally the acquisition of the 
* Linné de l’Europe” of Gilibert —in which the Linnean 
artificial classification even then annoyed him by its incongru- 
ity with the natural relationships which he already recognized : 
these had by this time fixed his fate before he was at all aware 
of it; and perhaps had even determined in some sort his 
characteristics as a botanist. 
An unexpected opportunity to pass the ensuing winter in 
Paris opened the way. This occurred through an invitation 
from Dolomieu, who, while young De Candolle was herboriz- 
