320 Notice of Prof. De Candolle. 



have had enough to do to examine and describe the plants they 

 have been gathering, or that have been sent home to them. 



De Candolle did not wait to ask how his labors were received 

 abroad. In 1808 he became an inhabitant of Montpelier,* and 

 took charge of the botanic garden there, which he raised to the 

 highest perfection. For ten years from this time, he must have 

 been beyond measure diligent. He thoroughly explored the 

 south of France, gave courses of lectures at the Faculty of Med- 

 ecine in Montpelier, published, in conjunction with Lamarck, a 

 synopsis of the plants of the French flora, gave a catalogue of the 

 plants in the botanic garden of Montpelier, pubUshed figures and 

 descriptions of the rarer plants of France, several articles on geo- 

 graphical and agricultural botany, in 1813 his Elementary The- 

 ory of Botany,! and, in 1816, a second edition in octavo, of his 

 "Essay on the Medical Properties of Plants." 



The object of this work,J is to ascertain the relations which 

 subsist between the medical properties of plants, their external 

 forms, and their natural classification. The dedication is curious : 



" To the botanists who laid the foundation of the Theory of 

 Natural Relations, — J. and G. Bauhin, Tournefort, Magnol, Ray, 

 Morison, who had an anticipation of it ; Bernard de Jussieu, 

 who proved it ; Adanson, who developed it ; Antoine-Laurent de 

 Jussieu, who subjected it to fixed laws ; Desfontaines, who con- 

 nected it with vegetable anatomy ; Richard, who threw hght 

 upon it by the analysis of fruits ; Robert Brown, who extended 

 it by the examination of the plants of New Holland." 



Considering the uniform justice and generosity of De Candolle, 

 this dedication is remarkable for its injustice in omitting the name 

 of LinnEeus, t0 whom, as he confesses in this very work,^ is due 

 the first perfectly distinct enunciation of the principle which it 

 is the object of the " Essai" to prove — that plants of the same 

 genus have the same properties ; those of the same natural order, 

 similar properties ; and those of the same natural class, some 

 analogy in their properties ; and he admits that Jussieu adopts 



* Flore Franqaise, vi, 7. 



t Thfeorie Elementaire de la Botanique. 1 vol. 8vo. A second edition was 

 published in J 819. 



X Essai sur les Proprietes Medicales des Plantes, comparees avec leurs formes 

 exterieures et leur classification naturelle. Paris. Crochard, 1816. 



§ Essai, Introduction, p. 4. 



