Notice of Prof. De Candolle. 223 



But De.Candolle had undertaken a work perhaps beyond the 

 strength of any man, whatever might be his capacity ; and I be- 

 heve no other vohime has appeared. 



In November, 1823, he finished, at Geneva, the first vohime of 

 a work of infinitely less pretensions, undertaken at the urgent 

 request of his friends, which he ofi"ered and intended only as a 

 rapid survey of plants, to precede his great work, the completion 

 of which he still kept in view. He gave it the modest title of 

 Prodromus.* The first volume, comprehending fifty four orders, 

 was published in 1824.f 



In the next year came the second volume, containing only ten 

 orders, showing that his materials were rapidly accumulating un- 

 der his hands, and that he had imperceptibly enlarged his plan. 

 This was accompanied by a volume of Memoirs on the Legumi- 

 nosae,! with numerous plates. In 1828, '30, '36, '37 and '38, 

 appeared successive volumes of the Prodromus, and within this 

 period, ten memoirs on various subjects, with plates, now collected 

 in one volume. <§> 



During all this time, his lectures were going on at the Museum 

 in Geneva; among others, a course on agricultural botany, of 

 the substance of which we have some portion in the graceful dress 

 in which it is presented by Mrs. Marcet in that admirable volume 

 which she called "Conversations on Vegetable Physiology. "|| 



of De Lessert, was edited by B. De Lessert, with one hundred plates by Turpin, 

 and published in Paris in 1820. A similar volume, still better executed, also un- 

 der the direction of Turpin, and with one hundred of his engravings, and many 

 beautiful dissections, was published by De Lessert in 1323, in illustration of the 

 second volume of the Systema. 



* Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis. Parisiis: Treuttel et 

 Wurtz. Pars Prima, 1824. 



t In 1837, De Lessert published a third volume of Illustrations in the same style 

 and of the same size of those just noticed, containing figures of some of the rarer 

 plants in the first four volumes of the Prodromus, together with those of others 

 not described in that work. 



+ Memoires sur la Famille des Legumineuses. Paris : 70 planches, 4to. pp. 525. 



§ Collection de dix Memoires pour servir a. I'Histoire du Regne Vegetal. Paris : 

 Treuttel et Wurtz, 1828—1838. 



II This has been published in this country under the title of "Blake's Bot- 

 any" by some person who has thus claimed a property of authorship in the 

 book, on no better ground than his having interspersed questions which give not 

 the slightest intimation of an acquaintance with the subject, and leave one doubt- 

 ful whether he knew enough of it to distinguish a sedge from a bulrush, or a moss 

 from a lichen. Would that this shameless kind of piracy were confined to a 

 solitary case. 



