8 jMartius on the Life and Labours of DeCandoUe. 



from the press. He had at the same time formed a plan of pre- 

 parmg an extensive statistical work upon the condition of farming 

 and of evei-ything connected with it, which he would probably 

 have completed, accustomed as he was to give to his plans the 

 fullest development, if the political catastrophe of 1814 had not 

 directed his activity into new channels. Only a few portions of 

 that work were completed by him. One result of these journeys 

 was the very valuable supplement, in a botanical point of view, to 

 his ' Flore rran9aise.^ Meanwhile he had been called, in the year 

 1807, to the professorship of the medical faculty at Montpelicr. 

 He repaired thither a few years later (1810) to take possession 

 of the professorship of botany in the philosophical faculty {facultc 

 des sciences) which was then created. He received the direction 

 of the botanical garden, the collections of which he soon doubled. 

 His active spirit animated the scholars, who flocked thither in 

 great numbers. Since Magnol, the chair of botany at IMontpelier 

 had never exercised so favourable an influence on the academic 

 youth. The clearness, fullness and elegance of his style, the 

 practical bearing which he gave to his teachings, with the genial 

 serenity and freshness of his character, which united the glow of 

 the Provencals with the serious diligence of the Swiss, — who 

 could withstand such qualities ? His ready talent for extempo- 

 raneous discourse, and the spirit and grace which he threw into 

 his lectures, made his science charming even to women. Even if 

 what passes by the name of botany among the fair sex in France 

 and Switzerland be not precisely his science, yet it may be deemed 

 a proof of his influence, that in those countries a knowledge of 

 plants is regarded as almost as essential an element in the edu- 

 cation of women as that of music with us sound-lo\ing Germans. 

 One result of his academical labours at Montpelier, of great in- 

 terest for the scientific public, was the publication of his ' Theoric 

 Elementaire de Botanique^; the first edition of which appeared in 

 1813, the second in 1816. This book put into circulation a host 

 of new and sound ideas in vegetable morphology and physiology. 

 His talent for generalization is manifest throughout this work, 

 often leading him, indeed, into by-ways, which however, like 

 every excursion of the true inquirer, tend to bring him ultimately 

 to a higher point of view. Two doctrines, here for the first time 

 propounded in a scientific connexion, that of the confluence or 

 union of organs [soudures), and that of their unequal development 

 or suppression {avortemens) , have become, under certain points of 

 view, canons in observation. It may be said in general of the 

 theoretical views of DeCandolle, that they differ in many respects 

 from those of Linnaeus, and often justly supersede them, because 

 they arc founded on broader and more physiological premises. I 



