Martins, on the Life and Labors of De Candolle. 221 



Jardin des Plantes he had made the acquaintance of Lamarck, 

 Deleuze, and Desfontaines. To the latter his heart was pecu- 

 liarly drawn. The gentle repose of this learned and amiable 

 man enchained him as to a second father;* and he preserved to 

 his latest breath the most tender and grateful affection as well for 

 him as for Vaucher. These winter sessions had opened to him 

 a view into the depth and extent of natural science. He per- 

 ceived the importance of the relations between physics, chemis- 

 try, and botany; he perceived that the latter science had reached 

 a station where she required especially for her completion the aid 

 of the others. He determined to labor in this field, and to help 

 to bring botany out of her isolated position. This was besides 

 the peculiar task of the period. The labors of our great M. von 

 Humboldt, of Priestley, of Ingenhauss, &c. had extended the 

 domain of botany in a similar direction. Accordingly he came 

 out first with his treatise upon the nourishment of Lichens, which, 

 in the summer of 1797, was laid before the Societc de Physique 

 et d'Histoire Naturelle, then recently established by Saussure at 

 Geneva. His intercourse with Senebier and Vaucher confirmed 

 him in this direction of his faculties. It is easy to perceive that, 

 in the whole course of his literary labors, he sought to make the 

 doctrines of physics and of chemistry available in their applica- 

 tion to botany. We find the same spirit in his excellent treatise 

 Sur les Proprictes Medicates des Plantes, (Paris, 1804, 4to,) of 

 which Perleb has given a German version (1810) enriched with 

 many valuable additions. He attempted in this work to repre- 

 sent more fully than had been before done, the parallel suggested 

 by Linnaeus, but opposed by other writers, between the outward 

 forms of plants and their chemical constitution and adaptation to 

 pharmacy ; a labor in which he manifested a happy talent for 

 tracing back various phenomena to their origin in general prin- 

 ciples. 



In the year 1798. Geneva was incorporated into the French 



republic. De Candolle, finding his future prospects much affect- 

 ed by this event, the property of his parents having been materi- 

 ally diminished by the catastrophes of the Revolution, determined 



* De Candolle honored the memory of his friend, who died on the 16th of No- 

 vember, 1833, by a " Notice Historique sur la vie et les travaux de M. Desfontaines" 

 in the Bibliothcque Univers., Feb. 1834. 



