222 Martius, on the Life and Labors of De Candolle. 



to adopt the medical profession, and easily obtained the consent 

 of his father, who hoped that he would be thus established in 

 a lucrative mode of life. The son, meanwhile, whose enthusi- 

 asm for botany had increased from year to year, thought princi- 

 pally of the greater facilities he should thus enjoy for the pursuit 

 of his favorite science. During this year he went the second 

 time to Paris ; and taking up his abode in the neighborhood of 

 the Jardin des Plantes, he gave himself up with zeal to the 

 study of its accumulated treasures. Lamarck encouraged him 

 to labor with him in the botanical portion of the Encyclopedie 

 Methodique; in which he wrote the articles Parthenium and 

 Lepidium. He also assisted Lamarck in the preparation of the 

 article on Panicum, Poiret in that on Paspalum, described the 

 species of Senebiera, and published his treatise on Lichens. At 

 the request of Desfontaines, he undertook the preparation of the 

 text for the Plantes Grasses, which Redoute had begun to rep- 

 resent in a splendid iconographical work. He received on this 

 occasion the most friendly assistance from Desfontaines and 

 L'Heritier, who gave him the free use of their rich collections 

 and invaluable books. If neither this work, nor that on the Li- 

 liacece, which Redoute published somewhat later, (also with the 

 assistance of De Candolle,) nor the Astragalogia, published in 

 1S02, merit the praise of exact analytical descriptions of individu- 

 als, such as science now demands of monography ', yet they al- 

 ready foreshow the facility and acuteness of systematic compre- 

 hension, which so fully characterize De Candolle's later efforts. 



At this period he contracted a close friendship with the noble- 

 minded Benjamin De Lessert, a man always open to every thing 

 great and useful. T-he two friends glowed with the purest en- 

 thusiasm for the benefit of their fellow men. They founded the 

 Societe Philanthropique, whose first operation, during a time of 

 public necessity, was the distribution in Paris of the Rumford 

 soup. De Candolle was during ten years the secretary and an 

 active member of that benevolent society. At this time he 

 brought to maturity another institution of a similar tendency, 

 which is still flourishing, viz. the Sociele d' Encouragement pour 

 V Industrie Nationale; he drew up the statutes for this society, 

 and assisted until the year 1807 in preparing the bulletins issued 

 by it. His activity in this field of philanthropy was maintained, 

 and enlarged by his intercourse with many distinguished men of 



