EDMOND BOISSIER. 481 



It was a noble life, shadowed by an early bereavement, and 

 in later years worn by painful disease, — the manly life of 

 one who lived simply and wrought industriously where many 

 others with his independent fortune would have lived idly and 

 luxuriously; and he was no less a loyal and public-spirited 

 citizen. Upon an occasion when, long ago, we met him at 

 Geneva, he had no time for botanical parlance, for he was 

 doing duty in the ranks of the federal army. Later, at a time 

 of commotion at Geneva, he helped to quell a revolutionary 

 riot, and received a painful bayonet wound in the service. 

 True to his ancestry, he was a devoted Protestant Christian, 

 a trusted member of the synod of the Free Church in Canton 

 Vaud, where he lived when not in winter residence at Geneva, 

 and where his assiduous attentions to the poor and sick will 

 be remembered. lie was a man of fine presence, and till past 

 middle life of much bodily vigor. As a botanist he gave him- 

 self to systematic work only, for which he had a fine tact, and, 

 like the school in which he was bred, perhaps a faculty of 

 excessive discrimination. No man living knew the Europeo- 

 Caucasian plants so well, or could describe them better ; and 

 his herbarium must be, with possibly one rival, the most ex- 

 tensive and valuable private collection in Europe. He loved 

 living flowers as well, and rejoiced in his choice conservatory 

 collections at Rivage, on the shores of the Leman, and in his 

 well -stocked rock-works of alpine plants which adorn his 

 grounds at Valeyres. 



A charming biographical notice by one who knew him well 

 through his whole life, M. De Candolle, is contained in the 

 "Archives des Science" of the " Bibliotheque Universelle 

 de Geneva " for October last. 



