334 RAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. 



M. Biot returned to Paris, and Arago, who had re- 

 mained in order to effect the geodetic junction of Ma- 

 jorca with Ivica and Formentera, happening to be on 

 Spanish soil at the moment when the war burst out, was 

 taken for a spy, and imprisoned, but, having made his 

 escape, he took refuge at Algiers. When on the point 

 of returning to France, he was retaken by a Spanish 

 pirate, and sent, together with all the crew, to the galleys 

 of Palamos. Having been claimed by the Dey of Algiers, 

 he was at length enabled to return to Paris, where the 

 fame of his works and of his various adventures secured 

 for him the friendship of some of the most distinguished 

 men of that period. 



On the death of Lalande, Arago was appointed, in his 

 twenty-fourth year, to succeed him as a member of the 

 Institute. He subsequently became an examiner at the 

 School of Metz, a member of the Bureau des Longitudes, 

 and a professor at the Polytechnic School ; but he 

 resigned the latter post when the Academy of Sciences 

 selected him in 1830 for their perpetual secretary. 

 Arago was remarkably well adapted to discharge the 

 difficult duties of this office. His ready conception, and 

 his easy and clear style, enabled him to comprehend and 

 to analyse, in a mode at once critically exact and singu- 

 larly popular, the numerous memoirs on all varieties of 

 subjects which were presented to the Academy at every 

 meeting. It was in consequence of these qualities that 

 the elementary lectures on astronomy which he delivered 

 at the observatory were always numerously attended. 

 The fame of these lectures, which were begun in 1812, 

 and which he annually delivered until a short time before 

 the Revolution of 1848, was one of the causes which gave 

 early celebrity to the name of Arago. The academic eloges 

 which he read at the public meetings of the Academy, 

 and the notices which he inserted in the Annuaire du 



