ii Horace- Benedict de Saussure 85 



awaken in the heart of every responsive climber. How 

 few among the thousands who every year repair to the 

 Alps, the Pyrenees, the Caucasus, or who find their way 

 to the peaks of the Kocky Mountains and the Sierra 

 Nevada, are aware of the debt they owe to the great 

 geologist of Geneva ! 



De Saussure was born in that city in the year 1740. 

 His career at college was so distinguished that at twenty 

 years of age he became a candidate for a professorship of 

 mathematics, and at two-and-twenty obtained one of philo- 

 sophy. Trained in physical science, he acquired habits 

 of exactitude in observation and reasoning, which stood him 

 in good stead in the scientific life to which he eventually 

 devoted himself. Botany was his first love, and after a 

 long and fruitful devotion to other parts of the domain of 

 science, it was to plants that he turned again at last in the 

 closing years of his life. Amidst his laborious campaigns 

 in the Alps, the plants of the mountains never lost their 

 charm for him. Among the highest crests, surrounded by 

 all that is most impressive in nature, and occupied with 

 the profoundest problems in the history of the globe, he 

 would carefully gather the smallest flower and mark it 

 with pleasure in his notebook. 1 



De Saussure's attitude towards his native mountains 

 may be inferred from a few of the sentences with which 

 he prefaces his immortal work. "It is the study of 

 mountains which above all else can quicken the progress 

 of the theory of the earth or geology. The plains 

 are uniform, and allow the rocks to be seen only 

 where these have been excavated by running water 



1 Cuvier, " Eloge de Saussure," Ullages, vol. i. p. 411. 



