4 
AUGUSTIN-PYRAMUS DE CANDOLLE. 109 
were for belles-lettres and poetry. At the age of sixteen he hap- 
pened to attend a few lectures of a short course on botany, given 
by Vaucher,—who, living to a venerable age, survived his distin- 
guished pupil. Here he learned the names of the parts of the flower, 
but nothing whatever of classification, having gone into the country 
for the summer before that portion of the course was reached. But, his 
curiosity was awakened ; and in his leisure hours he began to collect, - 
observe, and even to describe the plants he met with in his rambles, at 
first without any botanical book whatever to guide him, and without 
any idea beyond that of amusement or relaxation. The next winter, 
returning to Geneva and to his college studies, he came to know Saus- 
sure, then in his last years and half paralytic. The veteran physicist, 
while he endeavoured to attract the young man to scientific pursuits, 
discouraged his predilection for botany. That he regarded as quite 
unworthy of serious attention. Another summer passed upon the side 
of the Jura, however, and the perusal of Duhamel's ‘Physique des 
Arbres, of the * Researches upon Leaves’ of the Pastor Bonnet (a friend 
of his father), also of Hale’s ‘ Vegetable Statics,’ which he painfully 
translated from the English, and finally, the acquisition of the ‘ Linné 
de Europe’ of Gilibert, in which the Linnean artificial classification 
even then annoyed him by its incongruity with the natural relationships 
which he already recognized,—these had by this time fixed his fate be- 
fore he was at all aware of it, and perhaps had even determined in 
some sort his characteristics as a botanist. 
An unexpected opportunity to pass the ensuing winter in Paris 
opened the way. This occurred through an invitation from Dolomieu, 
who, while young De Candolle was herborizing in the Jura, had been 
mineralogizing in the Alps, attended by two of De Candolle's school- 
mates, Picot and Pictet. In the autumn of 1796, the three young 
men proceeded to Paris, under the auspices of Dolomieu, who seeured 
for De Candolle a lodging immediately over his own apartments, and 
presented him to Desfontaines and Deleuze at the Jardin des Plantes. 
No botanical lectures were given at that season of the year; but De 
Candolle attended the principal scientific courses then in progress; 
among them, those of Foureroy and Vauquelin upon chemistry, of 
Portal and Cuvier upon anatomy, and of Haüy upon mineralogy. It 
was at this early period that his acquaintance and life-long intimacy 
with the excellent Delessert family commenced. By a rather ingenious 
