AUGUSTIN-PYRAMUS DE CANDOLLE. 295 



et ne sais pas merae s'il s'est apercu de cette petite malice. Je dois 

 dire que je ne pretendis point, meme alors, que se fut un plagiat 

 volontaire, mais il arrive souvent dans les sciences qu'on s'appropie, 

 sans s'en douter, ce qu'on a entendu dire. 



" Cette circonstance eveilla ma propre attention sur la justice ri- 

 goureuse que j'ai desire rendre a tous : la force de ma mdmoire, et 

 surtout le soin que j'ai eu tres-jeune de noter les faits et les idees 

 nouvelles que j'entendais dans la conversation, m'ont mis a meme de 

 pouvoir, bien des annees apres une conversation, citer exactement 

 celui de qui j'avais appris un fait ou une opinion quelconque. Cette 

 habitude de justice m'a fait beaucoup d'amis, et j'ai eu souvent des 

 remerciements de gens cites par moi, qui eux-memes avaient oublie 

 ce qu'ils m'avaient dit." (pp. 91, 92.) 



To De Candolle's credit it must be said, not only that his 

 career was remarkably free from controversies about priority 

 and reclamations, but that his example and precepts, his scru- 

 pulous care to render due credit to every contributor, his re- 

 spect for unpublished names communicated to his own or 

 recorded in other herbaria, and the like, have been most 

 influential in establishing both the law and the ethics which 

 prevail in sj^stematic botany (more fully, or from an earlier 

 period than in the other departments of natural history), 

 and which have secured such general cooperation and harmo- 

 nious relations among its votaries. 



In these early days De Candolle was a good deal occupied 

 with vegetable physiology ; the results are contained^ in his 

 papers " on the pores in the bark of leaves," i. e. stomata ; on 

 the vegetation of the Mistletoe ; and on his experiments rela- 

 tive to the influence of light on certain points, mainly those 

 which exhibit strikingly the change in the position of their 

 leaves at night, which has been called the sleep of plants. The 

 account of these experiments, in which he caused certain plants 

 to acknowledge an artificial night and day, when read before 

 the Institute, gave him considerable eclat, — and probably 

 also the compliment of being named one of the three candi- 

 dates to till the vacancy in the Academy of Sciences left by 

 the death of L'Heritier. A mere compliment, for the contest, 

 of course, was between Labillardiere and Beauvois. In the 



