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Notice of Prof. De Candolle. 221 
this opinion.* The omission is, moreover, inconsistent with the 
profound respect with which he always refers to the great sys- 
tematist. 
In the midst of and by means of this multiplicity of labor, 
DeCandolle was commencing what he meant to be the great 
work of his life, and what, if he had lived to complete it as it was 
begun, would have been tee the most remarkable work on bot- 
any ever executed—I mean his Natural System of the Vegetable 
Kingdom.+ He seems to have entered upon it with a full sense 
of the greatness of the undertaking before him, and with a lofty 
and resolute, but ever modest purposet of devoting his whole 
strength and time, with all his immense resources and all the 
accumulated ability of a life devoted to the preparation, to its 
accomplishment. One is reminded of the heroic perseverance 
with which Saussure, from the banks of that same beautiful lake 
of Geneva, had for so many years cherished the firm resolve to 
scale Mont Blanc, and make known the new and strange phe- 
nomena which its naked top should present; or of that more 
than heroic purpose, cherished and kept still at heart through a 
whole life of preparation, of the far greater Milton, to achieve 
something worthy to be remembered in future years, and to place 
his name with those of 2 
“Blind Thamyris and blind Meonides, 
= Tiresias and Phineas, prophets old.” 
De Candolle’s plan was no less than to arrange and describe, 
in their natural orders, all known plants, giving to each order the 
fulness and completeness of a monograph. We who now look 
back upon his work, can see how far he soared above those whom 
he hoped to equal, Lamarck, Willdenow, Vahl, Persoon. Few 
works give us better executed examples of the Pesoniah method, 
of forming general conclusions from the careful observation of 
particulars, and thence going back and reéxamining the particulars. 
He first minutely examined all the species of a genus, and thence 
* After quoting Amen. Acad. V; P- vin for this opinion of bows he adds, 
“'M. de Jussieu adopte !a méme opinion.” Introduction, p. 
t Regni Vegetabilis Systema Naturale, sive ordines, genera et species plantarum 
secundum methodi naturalis normas digestarum et descriptarum. Volumen Pri- 
mum, Parisiis, samptibus sociorum Treuttel et Wurtz, 1818. 
crn ipsam curam, hoe opus quod nemo 4-088 nos, nemo apud Meese ts oscre 
midus hodie aggredior. Prolegomena, p. 3 
