I08 HEROES OF SCIENCE. 



the young seeds are formed. The happy circum- 

 stances which surrounded the young man at Paris 

 enabled him to see the great comedies of the day 

 and to admire the splendid acting at the theatres. 

 But he was a philosopher then, and he could not 

 but be struck with the furious gaiety of society 

 and the great frivolity of the day, and with that 

 careless method of living and thinking which fol- 

 lowed as a kind of revulsion on the awful scenes 

 of the Revolution and the Reign of Terror. In the 

 spring of 1797, De Candolle returned to Geneva. 

 There he studied the physiology of plants with 

 M. Sdnebier, going to his father's house in the 

 holidays, which were spent in botanical excur- 

 sions. In one of these, on the Jura Mountains, De 

 Candolle discovered a new fungus of a beautiful 

 red colour, and his adventure in obtaining the 

 specimen was very characteristic of the man. On 

 the sides of those hills are many very precipitous 

 trough-like paths, down which the wood-cutters 

 pass the fir trees they cut high up on the moun- 

 tains, to the valleys. They are rugged at the sides, 

 and have really been worn out of the hills by 

 running water and the rushing downwards of the 

 trees. Active people can slide down these "couloirs" 

 by sitting on a stick placed between one's legs, 

 and down went young De Candolle in that fashion. 

 As he rushed along, he saw a beautiful red plant 

 on a branch of a tree overhanging the couloir, and 

 as he slid down he managed to cut the branch and 

 obtain his prize — his first new plant to describe. 



