I 



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



Broussonel, and Balbis, as well as with many foreign students of 

 nature, — with Vahl, Pallas, Willdenow, Jacquin, the younger 

 Hedwig and others, and made repeated journeys throughout 

 France. This work, a truly great one, embracing a region rich 

 in plants, was the first flora arranged according to the principles 

 of the Methode Naturelle. The introduction to it, which exhi- 

 bits a clear and orderly conception of nature, was De Candolle's 

 first attempt to give a scientific representation of this theory. It 

 met, as well as the annexed Clavis Analytical with the greatest 

 approbation. The work, the sale of which in the year 1804 had 

 already reached to four thousand copies, is now quite out of print. 

 It is the first book which has appeared in France in which we 

 Germans find a satisfactory account of Cryptogamous plants rest- 

 ing on autopsy, a class of plants which had been before much 

 neglected in France. The masterly manner in which an im- 

 mense mass of materials has been treated, — the exactness with 

 which the descriptions are given in a luminously technical style, 

 whilst at the same time more is said of the geographical situa- 

 tions of plants than has been usually the case, — stamp this Flore 

 Frangaise as a work of great merit. With this alone, would 

 De Candolle have fulfilled his obligations to the public, had he 

 written absolutely nothing else. So thorough a production could 

 not but meet with acknowledgment by the French government. 

 Such men as Chaptal and Lacepede knew how great an influ- 

 ence on the national welfare a thorough knowledge of the vese- 



c o o 



tation of the country would exert. He received accordingly a 

 commission in 1806, to travel through France and the kingdom 

 of Italy, and to study these countries in a botanical and agro- 

 nomical point of view. For six years he made a journey each 

 summer, and gave an account of his observations to the Minister 

 of the Interior. In these official reports he described the pecu- 

 liarities of the district of country, noted the modes of culture in 

 use, and presented plans for their improvement. He neglected 

 no occasion to bring forward unobserved truths. His noble in- 

 dependence of character often led him to protest against faults in 

 government, on which occasions he did not limit himself to his 

 immediate commission. Some of these official reports have ap- 

 peared from the press. He had at the same time formed a plan 

 of preparing an extensive statistical work upon the condition of 

 farming, and of every thing connected with it, which he would 



