110 AUGUSTIN-PYRAMUS DE CANDOLLE. 
device he contrived to make the acquaintance of Lamarck, but he 
gained little thereby in the way of botany, Lamarck being just then 
wholly occupied with the discussion of chemical theories. When De 
Candolle returned to Geneva in the spring of 1797, Lamarck sent by 
his hands a volume to Senebier, and so he came to know his amiable 
countryman, who, in ascertaining the capital fact that plants decom- 
se carbonic acid, may be said to have laid the foundation of modern 
yegetable physiology. The first genus which De Candolle established 
(in 1799) was Senebiera. 
From his narrative, it would appear that during this summer of 1797, 
the ambitious young botanist of two years’ standing, and only eighteen 
years old, had not only conceived the idea of writing an elementary 
work, but actually traced the plan and wrote some chapters of it! He 
even states that from this period date the first observations and the 
conceptions—confused indeed, but correct—of the part which the abor- 
tion and the union of organs play in floral structure,—namely, the 
ideas which principally distinguish the ‘ Théorie Elémentaire,” published 
fifteen years later. How far these ideas were developed, however, we 
have no means of ascertaining. One would like to see an extract from 
this early manuscript, in confirmation. 
'The following winter he began to study law at Geneva. But with 
the little State now annexed to the French Republic, the prospects were 
not encouraging. A career must be sought elsewhere. De Can olle 
determined to study medicine, at the same time prosecuting his bota- 
nical studies, so as to have a double chance, by falling back upon the 
former in case the latter failed to support him. 
In this view, he returned to Paris in the spring of 1798, just in time 
to see his patron Dolomieu set out for Egypt, as one of the savants of 
that famous expedition, and to decline a pressing invitation to accom- 
pany him. Taking a lodging in the Rue Copeau, to be near the 
Jardin des Plantes, he attended the hospitals and medical lectures, 
which he disliked, but recompensed himself at the Garden of Plants 
with the courses of Lacépède, Lamarck, Cuvier, and Haüy, omitting 
the botanical lectures, as not to his mind, but sedulously examining the 
plants of the Garden. He renewed his acquaintance with Lamarck, 
at whose request he wrote a few articles (under the letter P) for the 
* Dictionnaire Encyclopédique.’ Lamarck himself by this time had quite 
abandoned botany. 
