AUGUSTIN-PYRAMUS DE CANDOLLE. 291 



life was peaceful and long : he attained the age of eighty-four 

 years, and died in 1820. 



Augustin-Pyramus, the writer of this autobiography, ap- 

 pears to have been remarkable in his boyhood rather for 

 quickness of learning than for scholarship. His early tastes 

 were for belles-lettres and poetry. Specimens of his poetical 

 productions, both of his youth and of maturer years, are ap- 

 pended to the volume. Of their merit we cannot pretend to 

 judge. At the age of sixteen he happened to attend a few 

 lectures of a short course on botany, given by Vaucher, — 

 who, living to a venerable age, survived his distinguished 

 pupil. Here he learned the names of the parts of the flower, 

 but nothing whatever of classification, having gone into the 

 country for the summer before that portion of the course was 

 reached. But his curiosity was awakened ; and in his leisure 

 hours he began to collect, observe, and even to describe the 

 plants he met with in his rambles, at first without any botan- 

 ical book whatever to guide him, and without any idea beyond 

 that of amusement or relaxation. The next winter, returning 

 to Geneva and to his college studies, he came to know Saus- 

 sure, then in his last years, and half paralytic. The veteran 

 physicist, while he endeavored to attract the young man to 

 scientific pursuits, discouraged his predilection for botany. 

 That he regarded as quite unworthy of serious attention. 

 Another summer passed upon the side of the Jura, however, 

 and the perusal of Duhamel's " Physique des Arbres," of* the 

 " Researches upon Leaves " of Pastor Bonnet (a friend of his 

 father), also of Hale's "Vegetable Statics," which he painfully 

 translated from the English, and finally the acquisition of the 

 " Linne de l'Europe " of Gilibert — in which the Linnsean 

 artificial classification even then annoyed him by its incongru- 

 ity with the natural relationships which he already recognized : 

 these had by this time fixed his fate before he was at all aware 

 of it ; and perhaps had even determined in some sort his 

 characteristics as a botanist. 



An unexpected opportunity to pass the ensuing winter in 

 Paris opened the way. This occurred through an invitation 

 from Dolomieu, who, while young De Candolle was herboriz- 



