XV 



Protestant, held the professorship of botany. In 1814 the father was 

 transferred to the botanical chair of Geneva, and there, in 1825, 

 Alphonse took the degree of Bachelor of Science, and commenced the 

 study of law. In 1829 he took his doctor's degree in that faculty, 

 selecting as the subject of his inaugural thesis " Le Droit de Grace." 

 It should be observed, in passing, that his legal education had a 

 marked influence on his subsequent career, both as a citizen and as a 

 botanist ; on the one hand it qualified him to undertake civic duties 

 of inestimable advantage to his canton and country, and on the other 

 it contributed largely to the development of those qualities of exacti- 

 tude in collecting and recording facts, of methodical arrangement of 

 these, and of cautious reasoning, that are predominant features in all 

 his scientific writings. 



From a very early age Alphonse de Candolle had developed a love 

 of botany, and, when only 18 years old, he published his first con- 

 tribution to this science, in a paper on Agaricus tubceformis,* a 

 remarkable dimorphic fungus, found on the wood of thermal baths in 

 Piedmont, which appeared in the ' Annales des Sciences Naturelles ' 

 (vol. 1, p. 347). 



In 1830 he began to co-operate with his father in the elaboration of 

 the colossal * Prodromus Systematis Yegetabilium,' by the prepara- 

 tion of a monograph in advance of that work, on the Campanulacece, 

 which at once raised him to a high position as a botanist. It was 

 followed in 1832 by another monograph, supplemental to the ' Pro- 

 dromus,' upon the very obscure and little known tropical family of 

 Anonacece, which, owing to the want of materials, had been ineffi- 

 ciently dealt with in that work. On his father's death in 1841 the 

 future conduct of the ' Prodromus ' was undertaken by Alphonse, 

 who for upwards of half a century zealously laboured towards its 

 completion as editor and part author of the eight succeeding volumes ; 

 and thereafter of its continuation in the ' Monographise Phaneroga- 

 marum,' in which he was zealously aided by his eminent son Casimir. 



Alphonse de Candolle's individual contributions to the * Pro- 

 dromus ' consist of detailed descriptions of forty-five natural families, 

 containing 438 genera and upwards of 5300 species. Amongst these the 

 most important are the Myrsinacece, Lobeliacece, Apocynacece, Myri- 

 sticacece, Begoniacece, and Cupuliferce. The judgment of botanists upon 

 these (and upon those not enumerated) is that they exhibit all the 

 best qualities of monographic work, scientific and scholarly. As an 

 example of the completeness of his work, the last mentioned order 

 (Cupuliferce) may be instanced. It includes the great genus of oaks, 

 which had previously been represented descriptively by a chaos of ill- 



* Some of the most eminent botanists commenced the study of plants with the 

 lower cryptogams, as did the elder de Candolle, the first of whose long list of publi- 

 ations was on the nutrition of lichens. 



