292 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 



ing in the Jura, had been mineralogizing in the Alps, attended 

 by two of De Candolle's school-mates, Picot and Pictet. In 

 the autumn of 1796 the three young men proceeded to Paris, 

 under the auspices of Dolomieu, who secured for De Candolle 

 a lodging immediately over his own apartments, and presented 

 him to Desfontaines and Deleuze at the Jardin des Plantes. 

 No botanical lectures were given at that season of the year ; 

 but De Candolle attended the principal scientific courses then 

 in progress ; among them those of Fourcroy and Vauquelin 

 upon Chemistry, of Portal and Cuvier upon anatomy, and of 

 Hauy upon mineralogy. It was at this early period that his 

 acquaintance and life-long intimacy with the excellent Deles- 

 sert family commenced. By a rather ingenious device he 

 contrived to make the acquaintance of Lamarck, but he 

 gained little thereby in the way of botany, Lamarck being just 

 then wholly occupied with the discussion of chemical theories. 

 When De Candolle returned to Geneva in the spring of 1797, 

 Lamarck sent by his hands a volume to Senebier, and so he 

 came to know his amiable countryman, who, in ascertaining 

 the capital fact that plants decompose carbonic acid, may be 

 said to have laid the foundation of modern vegetable physiol- 

 ogy. The first genus which De Candolle established (in 

 1799) was Senebiera. 



From his narrative it would appear that, during this sum- 

 mer of 1797, the ambitious young botanist of two years' stand- 

 ing, and only eighteen years old, had not only conceived the 

 idea of writing an elementary work, but actually traced the 

 plan and written some chapters of it ! He even states that 

 from this period date the first observations and the concep- 

 tions — confused indeed, but correct — of the part which the 

 abortion and the union of organs play in floral structure, — 

 namely, the ideas which principally distinguish the " Theorie 

 Elementaire," published fifteen years later. How far these 

 ideas were developed, however, we have no means of ascer- 

 taining. One would like to see an extract from this early 

 manuscript, in confirmation. 



The following winter he began to study law at Geneva. 

 But with the little state now annexed to the great French 



