116 AUGUSTIN-PYRAMUS DE CANDOLLE: 
affairs during his residence at Paris, his particular investigations, his 
excursions in Switzerland and elsewhere,—even the memorable one 
in the Jura with Biot and Bonpland, in which he led the party 
into a position of imminent danger, causing Bonpland to bemoan 
his hard fate in having to perish on such a mole-hill as the Jura, 
after having safely climbed Chimborazo ;—his engagement and mar- 
riage (the latter in April, 1802) with Mlle. Torras, of a Genevan 
family resident in Paris ;—of the foundation of his herbarium by the 
fortunate acquisition of that of L’Héritier ;—of the first course of lec- 
tures which he gave, at the Collége de France, as a substitute for 
Cuvier, during the temporary absence of the latter, giving a course of 
vegetable physiology in place of one on general natural history ;—how 
he prepared to take the degree of M.D., in order to qualify himself as 
a candidate for the chair of medical natural history at the School of 
Medicine, then vacant; but how Richard, who disliked him because 
he was a pupil of Desfontaines, as De Candolle says, instigated Jussieu 
to offer himself for this chair, upon which, of course, De Candolle 
withdrew, but nevertheless wrote and sustained, as a thesis for the 
doctorate, his Essay on the Medical Properties of Plants, compared 
with their exterior forms and their natural classification. He bore his 
examination creditably, received his diploma, and the same evening, 
a private mock inauguration, which, considering the parties engaged in 
it, must have been irresistibly comical. 
For the event which fixed De Candolle in his true field of labour was 
his arrangement (in 1802) with Lamarck, who had long since aban- 
doned botany, to prepare a new edition of the ‘Flore Francaise.’ 
The arrangement was a favourable one to De Candolle, both financially 
and scientifically. The new edition was, of course, an entirely new 
work, one particularly adapted to De Candolle’s genius, and whi 
gave him at once a wide reputation. Indirectiy this work gave origin 
to the botanical explorations of the provinces of France, under the 
auspices of the Government, which engaged much of De Candolle’s 
attention from the summer of 1806 until he ceased to be a Fre 
subject. 
And now, the death of old Adanson left a vacancy in the botanical 
section of the Institute, which De Candolle might hope to fill. But 
parties and personal dislikes, as it appears, were not unknown nor un- 
influential in the Paris of half a century ago. Indeed, De Candolle 
