AUGUSTIN-PYRAMUS DE CANDOLLE. 111 
It was to Desfontaines that De Candolle was indebted for an imme- 
diate opportunity of beginning his botanical career. Tt came about 
thus. L'Héritier, who appears to have been wealthy, had engaged 
Redouté, the celebrated flower-painter, to prepare drawings of all the 
fleshy plants in cultivation, it being impossible well to preserve them 
in the herbarium. The artist, undertaking to publish these drawings, 
applied to Desfontaines for a botanist to furnish the descriptive letter- 
press. The kind Desfontaines recommended De Candolle, and more- 
over offered to direct him in the work. He freely opened to the young 
botanist his herbarium and library, and allowed him to study by his 
side; indeed, Desfontaines was his botanical master and fatherly friend. 
The botanical library of L’Héritier, then much the largest at Paris, 
was naturally at his service, until the death, by assassination, soon af- 
terwards, of its singular owner. De Candolle, thus connecting his 
name and studies with the work of the unrivalled flower-painter, ac- 
quired thereby, as he remarks, more reputation than he deserved, and 
more instruction than he expected. 
In the course of this same summer of 1798, an invitation from 
Alexander Brongniart, the mineralogist, (whom De Candolle had 
slightly known, through Dolomieu, on his first visit to Paris,) con- 
nected him with a small party of naturalists who made an excursion to 
Fontainebleau. Besides Dejean, the entomologist, then very young, 
Cuvier and Duméril were of the party. In the autumn of the same 
year he visited Normandy, with less celebrated companions, and formed 
his first acquaintance with marine vegetation. The next year, he made 
a visit to Holland, to consult the gardens and conservatories of that 
country, the richest in the plantes grasses, which then occupied his 
attention. One result of this journey was, that he induced his friend 
Benjamin Delessert to purchase Burmanti’s herbarium, and thus to lay 
the foundation of the important collections and library at the Hotel 
Delessert, which have been so useful to naturalists and so liberally de- 
voted to their service. During the winter of the following year, De 
Candolle elaborated the * Astragalogia,’ his first independent work of 
any considerable consequence, and which was published two years 
later: in this he found opportunity to dedicate to his friend Delessert 
the Leguminous genus Lessertia. 
About this time, namely, at the beginning of the century, he became 
acquainted with Mirbel, who had come up to Paris from the south of 
France, where he had been a pupil of Raymond. 
