308 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 



he there prepared the first volume of this work ; thus, with 

 characteristic ardor and courage, but without calculating its 

 immensity, entering upon the grand and most important un- 

 dertaking of his life, and into that field of labor in systematic 

 and descriptive botany for which he was eminently adapted, 

 by his enterprising disposition and unflagging industry, his 

 capacity for sustained labor, his excellent memory, his spirit 

 of order and method, his quickness of eye, and his great apti- 

 tude for generalization. 



The overthrow of the Empire, the Restoration, the Hun- 

 dred Days, and the final fall of Napoleon supervened. De 

 Candolle's life at Montpellier was troubled and his prospects 

 precarious. He naturally turned to his native Geneva, where 

 he had kept up intimate social relations ; and when he had 

 ascertained that a place would be provided for him, he ex- 

 changed the comparatively ample emoluments of the chair at 

 Montpellier for the very humble salary of one at Geneva, 

 encumbered with the duty of lecturing upon zoology as well 

 as botany. 



Pending the change he made a visit to England, in 1816, 

 of which a detailed account is given, with reminiscences of the 

 botanists and others whose personal acquaintance he then 

 made. We regret that we have no room left for further ex- 

 tracts : his account of Brown is expressive of the great re- 

 spect he entertained for him, and that of Salisbury and of 

 Lambert is amusing. 



Settled now at Geneva, at the good working age of thirty- 

 eight, the narrative of his steadily industrious and prosperous 

 life, and of his happy surroundings, flows on for nearly two 

 hundred pages, down to the sad overthrow of his health by 

 an overdose of iodine in 1836, his partial convalescence and 

 resumption of botanical work in 1837, and ends with the rec- 

 ord of the death of his only brother, at the beginning of the 

 year 1841, only eight months before his own. 



These twenty-five years witnessed the publication of the 

 two volumes of the " Systema " ; the change of plan to a 

 " Species Plantarum " in a restricted form, more nearly 

 within the limits of a mortal's life and powers ; the publica- 



