118 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



the Cornish climate and other facts. We know, for instance, 

 that immediately on his return to London at the end of October 

 he planned and carried out a trip to Cambridge and Oxford, and 

 we have also a letter he wrote two days before starting on it to 

 the Rector of the Academy of Geneva making a second appeal for 

 an extension of his leave of absence (which was granted), and 

 describing his successful visit to the Cornish mines and to the 

 Land's End. 



To Cambridge de Saussure took letters of introduction to 

 Dr. Rutherforth, the Regius Professor of Divinity, who was also 

 a F.R.S. One wonders if he called on Gray, whose quiet had just 

 been disturbed by the visit of the King of Denmark, and who was 

 a few months later to be fascinated by de Saussure's and Bonnet's 

 young neighbour and acquaintance, Bonstetten. Of his and his 

 wife's visit to the sister University and Bath, the only record is a 

 bill dated Oxford, 10th November, from one Joshua Platt for a 

 collection of fossils. From its address we learn that the de 

 Saussures were then staying with ' Mr. Hurst opposite Cumberland 

 House, Pall Mall.' 



The loss of the diary of de Saussure's last weeks in England 

 is unfortunate, and it is tantalising to read in a letter dated from 

 London, 21st October : ' I have made the complete tour of England, 

 and if I were not afraid that this letter would be drowned with 

 the rest, I would tell you a vast number of things which perhaps 

 might interest you.' It would seem that some catastrophe in 

 the Channel must have occurred to previous letters. 



De Saussure was, Senebier tells us, taken sight-seeing in town 

 by Dr. Matey, the Foreign Secretary of the Royal Society and 

 Chief Librarian of the British Museum, whose ' taste, knowledge, 

 and judgment ' were commended by Gibbon. Dr. Johnson, how- 

 ever, wroth at some disrespectful comments on his Dictionary, 

 threatened on one occasion to throw him into the Thames ! At 

 the house of Sir John Pringle, the President of the Royal Society, 

 de Saussure met many of the men of the day. But there is no 

 record in the books of the Royal Society's Club of his having been, 



Senebier's statement as to his health ; on the contrary, they show both the de 

 Saussures in active enjoyment of society. De Candolle, in an obituary notice of 

 de Saussure, written immediately after his death (published in the Decade Philo- 

 sophique, vol. iv., June 1799), states explicitly that his illness was camsed by his 

 political exertions and anxieties. See also p. 129. 



