118 Correspondence of J. Nicklés. 
Henry Braconnot was born on the 29th of May, 1780, at Commer- 
cy, Department of the a His father, a lawyer, died seven years 
afier, leaving two sons, of whom Henry was the older. His property 
was not large, but was still si ss to give ag two children, who 
were bright ‘and active, a good education. At that time, the education 
punishment excepting corporeal inflictions. Braconnot was placed in 
a college of Benedictines, and brought little honor to his teachers. 
The slightest misdemeanor was met with a blow of the ferule—a m 
of correction calculated to exasperate rather than improve, and espe- 
cially injurious to this rather 1 impetuous child. He grew more and more 
o in 
having like him a feeling of a ~~ he became the terror of his gov- 
ernors. His mother in “despair ook him from the Benedictine col 
lege and entrusted him to a ar de cb culeadeans noted for his severily 5 | 
but the pedagogue succeeded no better than the Henedintionsyy he sent 
| 
young Henry home, presaging for him a dark fu | 
Meeting with the Benedictines, at this time, they ‘expressed, the same 
opivion of his comrade. But they were mista n both. We know 
what Braconnot was; his companion in frolic bedanke afterwards Dr. 
Marjolin, formerly Professor Hf Ms Faculty of Medicine at Paris, and | 
one of the first physicians of the modern school. 
Young Braconnot now naire earnestly in chemical studies. He , 
spent four years at Strasburg. “He then returne dto Paris to perfect | 
i ication, where he attended the 
who secured for him the pe of. ie Boianical Garden of ne 
(1807). The death of his father-in-law now left to his mother a la 
fortune which ultimately came to Braconnot; his mother living u 
her death at Nancy. 
From this time his memoirs succeeded one another without inter 
tion. In his analyses, he discovered successively pectine, populi 
equisetic acid, ellagic acid, and pyrogallic acid. in 1820 he sudden! 
changed his line of investigation, and took up the products of the 
neous fibre by acids, updo xyloidine, = i: 
latine, a nsformation of wood into sugar— 
a work of the very highest i 
in mature years. wa the reverse of what he was in ag 
B no 
modest and mild even to extrao 
ec a = friends. His tow 
etn 4 Eng f he was_underst 
thought him of contracted m 
