388 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



its regret that owing to the hard times it could not afford to pay 

 him more than twenty louis for the work. 



At the close of 1796 the third and fourth volumes of the 

 Voyages were published. The proofs were mainly corrected by 

 Theodore, who must be held responsible for the frequent lapses 

 found in them. 



In the previous year de Saussure in order to test his mental 

 powers had compiled a paper on ' The Use of the Blowpipe in 

 geological research.' He was again to return to his first pursuit, 

 botany, in one of his last publications, 1 a little tract, ' Conjectures 

 on the cause of the constant direction of the stalk and the root 

 at the moment of Germination ' (1798). But his working days 

 were over. The concluding volume which was to have summed up 

 his conclusions on the problems of geology was never written. 

 Senebier tells us he had examined two schemes for a system of 

 geology or Theory of the Earth set down by de Saussure in 1794 

 and 1796, and that they ' indicated generalisations on various 

 branches of the science without putting forward any trace of a 

 general conception which might bind together all the others by 

 submitting them as part of a theory, which might have added one 

 more to the theories invented and abandoned on this vast subject.' 

 But Professor Favre cites a fragmentary MS. dated 7th August 

 1796, which appears to have been a sketch for the theory that was 

 never written. 2 Some imperfect Memoranda and the Agenda at the 

 end of the Voyages are all that we have to indicate what might 

 have been its contents. Even de Saussure's private diary ends at 

 the close of 1796. A second seizure left him from that time for- 

 ward physically and mentally a wreck. He was unable to attend 

 to his own affairs, and his wife in writing for him constantly speaks 

 of her husband's feebleness. But he was still to live on for a 

 little over two years, which were spent mostly at Conches. In a 

 letter of the time we get a pathetic picture of him while staying 

 with the young Neckers, his daughter and son-in-law, during 

 the winter of 1796 : 



' Madame Necker [-de Saussure] has her father and mother with her 

 for the winter. It is a sad sight to see this poor M. de Saussure, his 



1 A paper on the fluctuations and temperature of the Arve was also pub- 

 lished in 1796. 



2 See Chapter xvn. on De Saussure in Science and Literature, p. 425. 



