August 15, 1895] 



NA TURE 



Zl^ 



(Brussels), Prof. Michie Smith (Madras), M. A. P. N. 

 Franchiniont (Leiden), Or. H. Haviland Field (New 

 York!, Dr. Bashford Dean Colombia College, New- 

 York i, Prof. J. W. Langley (Ohio, U.S.A.), Dr. Paschen 

 (Hanover), Dr. Conwentz (Dantzic), M. Berthelin (Pans). 

 A large number of the leading scientitic men in England 

 ha\e already notified that they will attend the meeting. 



The hon. 'local secretaries for the meeting are Messrs. 

 S. X. Notcutt, G. H. Hewetson, and E. P. Ridley. All 

 communications to them should be addressed to the 

 Museum, Ipswich. 



BAILLON, BABINGTON, EATON. 



BV the death of Henri Ernest Baillon, France has lost 

 one of her most accomplished botanists, and cer- 

 tainly her leading systematist. Under date of the 19th 

 ult. the writer received the following lines from a friend 

 at the .Museum d'Histoire naturelle, Paris. 



•■ le vous ccris sous une bien pcnible impression ; M. 

 Baillon est mort hier soir subitement. Dans I'apr^s 

 midi il <?tait venu au laboratoire selon son habitude. A 5 

 heures et demie il prit un bain ; a 6 heures son fils 

 rentrant de I'Ecole de Mcdecine le trouva mort. On 

 croit que le bain, un peu trop chauffe, a determine .une 

 congestion. 



" C'est une grande perte pour nous et pour labotanique. 

 S'il avait des ennemis implacables, il a\ait aussi des 

 amitids fiddles. Je ne doute pas que Tavenir ne montre 

 que derriere un esprit, dont les manifestations parfois 

 acerbes visait moins la personnalite que ce quMl jugeait 

 ctre Terreur, sc cachait un cceur sensible a Te.xces. 11 est 

 un bon nombre de ses cloves pau\res qui sa\ent de 

 quclles delicatesses il savait entourer une aumone. 



" Quoiquil en soit c'etait un grand botaniste ; vous le 

 jugez ainsi, n'est ce pas .•' 



" .Ses quatre enfants vont se trouver dans la mis^re la 

 plus profonde qu'cm puisse imaginer. Ce qu'il n'a pas 

 dcpensc de sa fortune pour la publication de ses livres 

 a disparu dans le gouffre des dettes de celle qui a porte 

 son nom. .Aujourd'hui il ne restc rien." 



The allusion to Baillon's personal character in the fore- 

 }joing letter will appeal to the sympathies of those who 

 knew him on this side of the channel. Unfortunately he 

 quarrelled with some of the foremost French botanists 

 of assured position, which led to regrettable and undig- 

 nified recriminations on his part, and resulted in closing 

 the doors of the .Acaddmie des Sciences against him for 

 ever. This embittered his life considerably, and ren- 

 dered his relations with a section of the botanists of 

 Paris almost unbearable. 



For most of the following jjarticulars of Baillon's 

 career I am indebted to the author of the above 

 letter. Henri Baillon, as he usually signed himself, was 

 born at Calais, November 29, 1827, of a femily of good 

 position and reputation in the town and district. He 

 studied with great distinction at the Lycde de X'ersailles, 

 and commenced his medical education at the age of 

 seventeen. In 1S54 he became house-surgeon at the 

 Hopital de la Pitie, Paris, a position obtained only by 

 severe competition ; and he was so brilliantly successful 

 in his work, that he was unanimously awarded the gold 

 medal of the Internal, the highest reward at the disposal 

 of the Facultc de Mcdecine. His candidature for the 

 degree of Docteur en M<?dccine was a perfect triumph, 

 for he completely held his examiners, both by the elegance 

 of his diction and the depth of his scientific views. In 

 1863 he succeeded Moquin Tandon in the Chair of Botany 

 at the F.cole de Mcdecine, and he filled this chair up to 

 the time of his death ; and for some time was Professor 

 of Botany at the Lycee Napoleon as well. He was also 

 Docteur Cs .Sciences. In 1875 he was elected a foreign 

 member of the Linnean Society of London, and last year 

 he received the same distinction from the Royal Society. 



NO. 1346, VOL. 52] 



This gave him much pleasure, and consoled him, in some 

 measure, for the implacability of his own countrymen. In 

 1 866 he and a few others founded the Societe Linneenne 

 de Paris. He was elected president, and continued to 

 act as such until his death. For some years the Pro- 

 ceedings of this very small Societ\- were published in 

 Baillon's o«n periodical, Adansonia, and then a Hulletin 

 Mensiiel appeared, and has continued to appear down 

 to the present time, entirely owing to the energy and 

 industry' of the president. This organ was not published, 

 but distributed to the leading botanical establishments ; 

 hence there is no record of Baillon's numerous articles 

 therein in the Royal Society's catalogue of scientific 

 papers. Yet, omitting these, the catalogue contains the 

 titles of 230 of his papers, published between 1854 and 

 1883. But Baillon was a most prolific writer, and covered 

 a considerable range, though systematic botany was his 

 chief study. 1 need only name his Adansonia, twelve 

 volumes, 1866 to 1879 ; '" Dictionnaire de Botanique," 

 four volumes, 1876 to 1892 ; " Histoire des Plantes," 

 1867-95, and still unfinished. Baillon, too, was the only 

 French botanist who occupied himself on the rich col- 

 lections of flowering plants in Paris from Madagascar ; 

 being the author of the uncompleted " Histoire des Plantes 

 de Madagascar," forming a portion of Grandidiers great 

 work on ^Madagascar. 



Baillon was one of the few existing botanists having a 

 good knowledge of the phanerogamic flora of the world. 

 As a writer, however, he was more critical than method- 

 ical, and many of his original observations and sugges- 

 tions have been overlooked by botanists who have subse- 

 quently g-one over the same ground. This is owing to 

 the fact that the titles of many of his articles do not 

 sufficiently describe their contents. Not infrequently a 

 new genus or a new species is described in the body of a 

 paragraph, and sometimes so informally, that only by 

 careful reading is it possible to arrive at the fact. This 

 often caused the author himself chagrin, especially as he 

 was ver>- sensitive and apt to believe that his work had 

 been purposely ignored. I had almost forgotten to 

 mention that the Euphprbiacea; were one of his favourite 

 families, and his " Etude Gendrale du Groupe des 

 Euphorbiacdes " is one of his most finished works. This 

 is not the place to enter into a more critical examination 

 of his works, but I cannot help mentioning that the 

 illustrations almost throughout are of a high order of 

 merit. Dr. Baillon has been a frequent visitor to Kew 

 and the British Museum during the last thirty years, and 

 many botanists will join me in regret for his sudden 

 death whilst apparently in almost the full vigour of life. 



The veteran Professor of Botany, Charles Cardale 

 Babington, in the University of Cambridge, whose death 

 has lately taken place, was bom at Ludlow in 1808, 

 and educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, taking 

 his B..-\. in 1830 and M..\. in 1833. .\s long ago as June 

 1830, he was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society ; 

 yet there are still two of earlier date in the Society's list, 

 namely, Dickinson Webster Crompton and William 

 Pamplin, both elected the previous January. There are 

 only two others, Thomas .Archer-Hind and James Bate- 

 man, who have been Fellows of the Society for upwards of 

 sixty years. In 185 I Babington was elected a Fellow of 

 the Royal Society, and among the fifteen of that year, it 

 may be mentioned, were the late Prof Huxley, Lord 

 Kelvin, Sir James Paget, and Sir Gabriel Stokes. In 

 1861 he succeeded the Rev. J. S. Henslow in the 

 Botanical Chair at Cambridge, a post he held up to 

 his death, though for many years he was incapaci- 

 tated from performing the duties. Prof Babington 

 was, in his early years at least, a prolific writer, 

 his first paper appearing in 1832. His writings 

 were almost exclusively on the British flora ; and 

 his name will stand in the history of British botany 

 as the inaugurator of a more critical delimitation 



