108 AUGUSTIN-PYRAMUS DE CANDOLLE. 
later days of the French Republic; he continued it at Montpellier until 
1816, when he returned to his native Geneva, where he died in Sep- 
tember, 1851,—on the fifth day of that month, according to the opening 
paragraph of his son’s preface to his father’s autobiography,—on the 
twenty-fifth according to the note by the same excellent authority at the 
close of the volume, p. 489. We cannot account for the discrepancy ; 
but the former is without doubt the true date. The twenty-one years 
which have elapsed since his death have thinned the ranks of those who 
knew De Candolle, either personally or by correspondence. The ‘Théorie 
Elémentaire,’ the *Organographie, and the ‘Physiologie Végétale? 
have played their part, and have long ago passed out of general use. 
Yet, thanks to their influence, but more especially to the ‘ Prodromus,' 
the name of De Candolle is still perhaps the most prominent one with 
the cultivators of the science in general the world over,—is associated, 
not indeed with the profoundest depths, but with a larger amount of 
botany, than any other name, except that of Linnzus. 
The family of Decandolle (to retain the style of orthography which 
is kept up at Geneva, in which the “De” is written as a substantial 
part of the name) is an old and noble one in Provence; and a 
branch of it, reaching Naples in the thirteenth century in the suite of 
the Anjou princes, flourished there, under a name gradually changed 
from Candola to Caldora, down to the middle of the sixteenth century. 
Augustin-Pyramus De Candolle derived one of his baptismal names 
from his ancestor, Pyramus de Candolle, who, becoming Protestant, 
fled from Provence to Geneva in the year 1591, following an uncle who 
had already been established there for thirty or forty years. Augustin 
was the name of his father, in his earlier days a Genevan banker, a 
member of the state council, military syndie, and, about the outbreak of 
the French Revolution, Premier Syndie of the little republic. Dis- 
placed by an earlier coup d'état as he was about to enter upon the 
duties of this office, he had retired into the country just in time to es- 
cape the worst perils of the woful imitation at Geneva of the Reign of 
Terror, in July, 1794, although he was condemned to death for contu- 
macy, and his property in the city for a time sequestrated. The rest 
of his life was peaceful and long: he attained the age of eighty-four 
years, and died in 1820. 
Augustin-Pyramus appears to have been remarkable in his boyhood 
rather for quickness of learning than for scholarship. His early tastes 
