Royal Society. 14 5 



has become, by the additions of his son and of his grandson, the 

 richest and the best arranged in Germany. His father was likewise 

 an eminent anatomist, and greatly distinguished for his success in the 

 practice of physic and of surgery, and for his general attainments. 

 It was for the purpose of enriching the great collection which he in- 

 herited, and of completing those departments of it in which it was 

 deficient, that young Meckel first directed his whole attention to 

 comparative anatomy ; but the results of his labours were not con- 

 fined to his museum : he published a German translation of the 

 Anatomie Comparee of Cuvier, which was enriched with many valu ■ 

 able notes. This was followed by his Contributions to Comparative 

 Anatomy; by his System der vergleichenden Anatomie, which he 

 did not live to complete ; his Tabula Anatomico-pathologicce; his 

 Handbuch der pathologischen Anatomie ; his work On Human 

 Monsters, and several memoirs relating to this branch of medical 

 science, which display a remarkable union of laborious research 

 with the most profound and original views relating to the pheno- 

 mena of animal life. He devoted a great portion of his time to the 

 publication of the Archiv fur Anatomie und Physiologie, one of the 

 most valuable and instructive periodical publications on medical 

 and physiological science which appeared in Germany. One of his 

 last works, on the Lymphatic System, which is upon a magnificent 

 scale, was dedicated to the celebrated Sommerring, upon the comple- 

 tion of his fiftieth year from the period of his inauguration as Doctor 

 in Medicine, as a tribute of respect to one who had been his own 

 preceptor, the fellow- student of his father, the follower and pupil of 

 his grandfather, the intimate friend of his family for three genera- 

 tions, and who was also one of the few of his living rivals in the 

 sciences which he cultivated. 



Meckel was only fifty years old at the time of his death : he united 

 in a very remarkable degree the power of correct and philosophical 

 generalization with the most profound and accurate knowledge of 

 anatomical details j and though he may have left in his own country 

 some who may equal or even surpass him in particular departments 

 of human and comparative anatomy or physiology, there is no one 

 of his countrymen, if, perhaps, Tiedemann be excepted, who can be 

 considered as having made such important additions to our general 

 views in those sciences. 



Rene' Louiche Desfontaines, Professor of Botany at the Jardin 

 du Roi, and one of the most distinguished botanists in Europe, was 

 born at Tremblay in 1752. In the course of the years 1782 and 

 1 783 he travelled, for the purpose of forming botanical collections, to 

 the North of Africa, penetrating as far as the range of Mount Atlas ; 

 and his Flora Atlantica, which was published in 1798, a splendid and 

 richly decorated work, contains the principal results of his labours. 

 It was in the same year that his celebrated memoir on the Organi- 

 zation of Monocotyledonous Plants was read to the Institute, in 

 which he demonstrated the different manners in which the ligneous 

 fibres are developed in plants with simple and double cotyledons, 

 and thus laid the foundation of two great and fundamental divi- 



Tlurd Scries. Vol.4. No. 20. Feb. 1834. U 



