i894. OBITUARY. 465 



PIERRE DUCHARTRE. 

 Born 1811. Died 1894. 



THE eminent French botanist who has just died was Professor of 

 Botany in the Faculty of Sciences at Paris, a member of the 

 Institut, and also a foreign member of the Linnean Society of 

 London, having been elected on May 3, 1877. He was the author 

 of numerous papers on plant-biology, including observations on the 

 flower and its organogeny, germination, and the young seedling, 

 among which we may recall some valuable contributions on poly- 

 cotyledonous embryos, respiration, transpiration, the question of the 

 absorption of water by leaves, the vegetation of epiphytic plants and 

 teratological notes. In 1867 he published a large and valuable text- 

 book, entitled " Elemens de Botanique," of which a second edition 

 appeared in 1877, ^^'^ ^ third in 1885. In 1868 he produced an 

 exhaustive report on the progress of plant-physiology. He was also 

 responsible for the fourth volume of Jacques and Heurincq's " Manuel 

 des Plantes," a systematically arranged encyclopaedia of plants in 

 cultivation, or of interest from an economic point of view. In his 

 younger days he edited for two years (1845-1847) a monthly periodical, 

 the Revue Botanique, a series of abstracts of the chief botanical works 

 published at home and abroad. He was led to undertake this onerous 

 piece of work by Benjamin Delessert, but, as many another young 

 and enthusiastic scientific worker has found, it meant giving up a 

 very large proportion of time, and stopped scientific research. The 

 death of Delessert in 1847 was therefore made the pretext for the 

 cessation of the Revue. 



GUILLAUME LOUIS FIGUIER. 



Born February 15, 1819. Died November 9, 1894. 



''PHE death of this eminent French chemist and naturalist is 

 1 announced. Figuier was born at Montpellier, at which town his 

 father Jean was a chemist. He received his doctor's degree from 

 the Faculty of Medicine of Montpellier, and left for Paris, where he 

 worked in the laboratory of the Sorbonne, under Balard. In 1846 he 

 became professor to the School of Medicine at Montpellier, where he 

 remained five years, retiring to Paris in 1852. Since 1855 he had 

 charge of the scientific columns of La Presse, and subsequently of 

 La France. In 1856-57 he attacked the views of Claude Bernard 

 regarding the secretion of sugar by the liver, and this at once brought 

 him into prominence. About this time, too, Figuier resigned his 

 appointments, renounced scientific research, and devoted himself 

 entirely to the popularisation of science. In this he was conspicuously 

 successful, and his popular books enjoyed a large and well-deserved 

 circulation. His best-known works are " La Terre avant le Deluge," 

 1863; "La Terre et les Mers," 1864; " Histoire des Plantes," 

 1865; "Les Zoophytes et les Mollusques," 1866; "Les Poissons, 



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