JOSEPH DECAISNE. 1 



Joseph Decaisne, the oldest member of the Botanical 

 Section on the foreign list, died at Paris, on the 8th of Feb- 

 ruary last, in the seventy-fifth year of his age. He was 

 elected into this Academy in August, 1846, along with Agas- 

 siz and De Verneuil. He was born at Brussels, March 11, 

 1807, the second of three brothers, one of whom became a 

 distinguished painter, and the other the head of the medical 

 department of the Belgian army. He came to Paris and 

 entered the Jardin des Plantes when a lad of seventeen years, 

 and in its service his whole subsequent life was passed- The 

 young employe attracted the attention of Adrien de Jussieu, 

 who, seeing his promise and unusual botanical knowledge, 

 soon placed him at the head of the seed department, and in 

 1833 made him his Aide-naturaliste, thus giving the young 

 gardener opportunity for the studies and researches by which 

 he won a place among the foremost botanists of the time. 

 For more than forty years the administration of the Jardin 

 des Plantes and the duties of the chair of Culture at the 

 Museum were in his hands, he having supplied the place of 

 Mirbel through the closing years of the latter's life, and suc- 

 ceeded him as professor in the year 1851 ; and these -duties 

 he continued to fulfill to the last. He was elected a member 

 of the Institute in 1847, in succession to Dutrochet ; for forty 

 years he was one of the editors of, and since the death of his 

 colleague, Adolphe Brongniart, he was the sole editor of the 

 botanical portion of the " Annales des Sciences Naturelles." 

 In the Annales he had published some good botanical pa- 

 pers, the earliest in the year 1831. But his first distinction 

 was gained by his anatomical and physiological researches 

 upon the Madder-plant, a monograph containing the results 

 of which appeared at Brussels in 1837, and was said to be 

 " one of the most able memoirs that has ever been published 

 on the physiological history of plants and their bearing on 



1 Proceedings American Academy of Arts and Science, xvii. 458. (1882.) 



