EDMOND BOISSIER. 481 
It was a noble life, shadowed by an early bereavement, and 
in later years worn by painful disease, —the manly life of 
one who lived simply and wrought industriously where many 
others with his independent fortune would have lived idly and 
luxuriously; and he was no less a loyal and public-spirited 
citizen. Upon an occasion when, long ago, we met him at 
Geneva, he had no time for botanical parlance, for he was 
doing duty in the ranks of the federal army. Later, at a time 
of commotion at Geneva, he helped to quell a revolutionary 
riot, and received a painful bayonet wound in the service. 
True to his ancestry, he was a devoted Protestant Christian, 
a trusted member of the synod of the Free Church in Canton 
Vaud, where he lived when not in winter residence at Geneva, 
and where his assiduous attentions to the poor and sick will 
be remembered. He was a man of fine presence, and till past 
middle life of much bodily vigor. As a botanist he gave him- 
self to systematic work only, for which he had a fine tact, and, 
like the school in which he was bred, perhaps a faculty of 
excessive discrimination. No man living knew the Europeo- 
Caucasian plants so well, or could describe them better ; and 
his herbarium must be, with possibly one rival, the most ex- 
tensive and valuable private collection in Europe. He loved 
living flowers as well, and rejoiced in his choice conservatory 
collections at Rivage, on the shores of the Leman, and in his 
well-stocked rock-works of alpine plants which adorn his 
grounds at Valeyres. 
A charming biographical notice by one who knew him well 
through his whole life, M. De Candolle, is contained in the 
“Archives des Science” of the “ Bibliotheque Universelle 
de Geneva ” for October last. 
