MEMOIR OF BARON HALLER. 43 



of laws for the regulation of this republic ; and 

 was often the commissioner of his own canton to 

 those assemblies to which were remitted the general 

 interests of the whole. He spent six years in the 

 canton of Aigle, and there printed his great work 

 on physiology. 



But such employments as these could not long 

 seduce the Baron from his literary occupations, 

 and he speedily again applied himself to them with 

 scarcely diminished energy. Within a few years of 

 his return to Berne, he wrote an important work 

 on Pathology, and also a treatise on Medical Elec- 

 tricity, on which we do not dwell. Removed, as he 

 now was, from the botanical and anatomical theatre 

 of Gottingen, we might be led to suppose that he 

 would have renounced these two branches of study 

 But he found plants in the country, and plenty of 

 the amphibice and fishes in the lakes, as he did 

 quadrupeds in the fields, and he thus amply supplied 

 himself with objects of investigation. He continued 

 his botanical pursuits, and with the help of the 

 microscope, made many additional observations on 

 the circulation of the blood in animals, on the growth 

 of their bones, upon the brain and eyes of birds 

 and fishes, several of which were published between 

 the years 1756 and 1765, and some of which ap- 

 peared at the time in the Memoirs of the Acad. 

 Royal des Sciences. 



Even after Haller's health began to decline, and 

 he was a good deal confined to the house, he still 

 discovered objects which excited his liveliest curi- 



