126 Development of the Natural System under [Booki. 



the Linnaean botanists in attributing an excessive value to 

 the describing of plants, as is shown in his history, where to 

 exalt the merits of the old botanists he gives figures of the 

 plants first described by them. 



Meanwhile the meritorious efforts of these men were not in 

 themselves capable of directly advancing the natural system, 

 or of greatly increasing the number of its adherents in 

 Germany, nor did it find general acceptance in that country 

 till it had made considerable pTogress in the hands of the 

 two foremost botanists of the time, De Candolle and Robert 

 Brown. 



Augustin Pyrame de Candolle * (1778-1841) belongs to 

 the number of those distinguished investigators of nature, who 

 at the end of the last and the beginning of our own century made 

 their native city Geneva a brilliant centre of natural science. 

 De Candolle was the contemporary and fellow-countryman of 

 Vaucher, Theodore de Saussure, and Senebier. Physics and 

 physiology especially were being successfully cultivated at that 



1 Augustin Pyrame de Candolle sprang from a Provencal family, which had 

 fled from religious persecution to Geneva, where it was and is still held in 

 great estimation. He associated as a boy with Vaucher, and on his first visit 

 to Paris in 1796 with Desfontaines and Dolomieu, and after his return to 

 Geneva was a friend of Senebier. The elder Saussure, and afterwards 

 Biot, whom he assisted in an investigation in physics, endeavoured to attach 

 him to that study. He spent the years from 1798 tp 1S08 in Paris, where 

 he lived in close intercourse with the naturalists of that city. Numerous 

 smaller monographs, and the publication of his work on succulent plants 

 and of a new edition of De Lamarck's 'Flore Francaise,' occupied this earlier 

 period of his life. From 180S to 1816 he was Professor of Botany at Mont- 

 pellier. During this time he made many botanical journeys in all parts of 

 France and the neighbouring countries, and wrote many monographs, his 

 essays on the geography of plants, and his most important work, the 

 • Theorie elementaire.' From 1816 till his death in 1841 he resided once 

 more in Geneva, which had freed itself in 1813 from the enforced connection 

 with France established in 1798. Here De Candolle found time to take 

 part in political and social questions, in addition to an almost incredible 

 amount of botanical labour. (Notice sur la vie et les ouvrages de A. P. De 

 Candolle par De la Rive, Geneve, 1845.) 



