NOTES OF TRAVEL GENEVA. 



There are few cities in the world that can boast of as many im- 

 portant botanical institutions as are to be found at Geneva. It is an 

 ideal location, with a fine climate both summer and winter, and free- 

 dom from all dust and smoke, the great drawback to institutions lo- 

 cated in large cities. 



THE CANDOLLE LIBRARY AND HERBARIUM. 



This has the reputation, and I think justly, of being the largest, 

 best-selected, and most complete private botanical library in exist- 

 ence. It has been built up gradually for a hundred years, all im- 

 portant botanical books being purchased as issued. It has been 

 handed down now from father to son for four generations, of which 

 two are now living. It is not necessary to tell botanical readers of 

 the work that has been done in phaenogamic botany by the Candolles. 

 No name is better known in the botanical world, and the writings 

 under this head require as much or more space to enumerate in 

 Pritzel as any other one name, not excepting Linnaeus. The Can- 

 dolles are a Swiss family. (I have always thought they were French, 

 probably because their writings are in French). The family home 

 has always been Geneva. 



The original Candolle, who first became interested in botany, 

 Auguste-Pyrame de Candolle, began the monumental work Prodromus 

 Syst. Nat. Regni Veget., in which all then known species of phseno- 

 garnic plants of the world are classified. It was continued and com- 

 pleted by his son, Alphonse de Candolle, and required for its pro- 

 duction nearly fifty years of continuous work. 



The botanist of the third generation, M. Casimer de Candolle, is 

 now seventy years old, but a vigorous, active man, whose appearance 

 belies his age, and I should not have taken him to be over sixty. His 

 son, M. Augustin de Candolle, is a young man. He was educated, I 

 am told, for the law, but never practiced the profession, devoting now 

 his time and study to botany in order to continue in the line of his 

 illustrious family. 



The Candolle herbarium is as rich as the library, and is the ac- 

 cumulation of more than a hundred years. The original herbarium 

 on which the Prodromus was based is kept separate and intact, and is 

 known as the Prodromus herbarium. Probably no other in existence 

 is of as much historic value or contains as man}" types. The Candolle 

 library and herbarium are in a private residence in Geneva, and my 

 impression is that it is the same house in which it was begun. It is 

 not a fireproof building, but erected in the substantial manner of 

 most buildings in the cities of Europe, where fires, fortunately, rarely 

 occur. 



THE BOTANICAL GARDEN AT GENEVA. 



This institution is maintained by the city of Geneva. It is lo- 

 cated on the lake front, some distance from the city proper. The 



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