no HEROES OF SCIENCE. 



began to study medicine, and led the odd life of 

 a medical student, attended to by old crones in 

 their second childhood, and witnessing all the sad 

 sights of the hospitals. Whenever he could, he 

 made his way to the Botanical Garden, and yet he 

 did not attend the lectures on botany. He found 

 them not consistent with what he knew. But he 

 was ever studying, describing, and observing plants, 

 and, knowing nobody at the gardens, sought out 

 Lamarck, who offered him some articles in his 

 Encyclopaedia to write. The articles were written, 

 and mistakes were naturally made, and in after 

 years they were readily acknowledged and set 

 right. But the work did not advance the young 

 botanist in his studies, although it confirmed him in 

 the necessity of examining all the parts of a plant 

 in classifying it, and in paying especial attention 

 to those organs which are the most important to 

 the life and reproduction of the kind. Leaving 

 his lodgings to board with a friend, De Candolle 

 was robbed, as was usual in those days, by his 

 housekeepers ; but he got into a worse scrape by 

 being inveigled into a gambling-house, where he 

 lost nearly all the money he had earned. It cured 

 him of that folly. At work he began to make 

 experiments on the action of different gases on the 

 roots of plants, and obtained some curious results ; 

 and M. Desfontaines, the Professor of Botany, gave 

 him hints about the correct method of describing 

 plants, so as to enable him to write the letterpress 

 to the plates of a work on those succulent plants 



