302 TRANSACTIONS OF THE SOCIETY OF GENEVA. 



as his amiability of character soon procured him protectors and friends amnng 

 the French savants who composed the Institute of Egypt. This circumstance 

 decided his tastes and vocation. At his return to France he applied himself 

 with zeal to medical studies, and in 1809 was nominated chief physician to 

 the Neapolitan army, under the government of Murat. Thenceforth he joined 

 to his public functions the study of the natural sciences, and particularly of 

 botany. Cryptogamy, and especially the cellular plants, till then much neglected, 

 offered to him a vast field of exploration. Frequent voyages and a widely ex- 

 tended correspondence enabled him to publish in the Annales de Botanique and 

 the Annales des Sciences Naturelles a great number of memoirs and articles on the 

 cellular cryptogams, the lichens, the champignons, the algae, &c., of Europe, Amer- 

 ica, and Oceanica He made also a remarkable application of his researches to the 

 maladies of the silk-worm, the vine and the potato. In 1842 he was nominated an 

 honorary member of our society,and in 1852 was elected amember of the Academy 

 of Sciences at Paris, in place of Professor Achiile Richard. An indefatigable and 

 conscientious laborer, Dr. Montague was one of those rare personages who have 

 preserved to extreme age all their mental vigor, and who have honored humanity 

 alike by the qualities of the intellect and the heart. He died at Paris, January 

 5, 1866. 



Elections. — The precarious health of Professor Macaire, not peimitting him 

 to attend our sessions regularly, had led him to decline the place of member in 

 ordinary, but his colleagues, not wishing to be deprived of ihe benefits of his 

 learning and experience, and remembering his distinguished services to thi: 

 society, have prevailed on him to preserve the title of member emeritus. M 

 Edouard Pictet has been elected member in ordinary, and MM, Bourcart, 

 Laharpe, and Audeoud, as associates at large, so that the number of our emeriti 

 is now two, that of members in ordinary forty, that of honorary members sixty- 

 four, and that of associates at large thirty-nine. In the session of January, 

 Professor Favre was proclaimed vice-president, and subsequently president for 

 the ensuing year; M. Philippe Plantamour was named treasurer for a year, re- 

 placing M. Favre ; Professor Marignac has been re-elected for three years as 

 secretary charged with the correspondence ; lastly, MM. Wartmann and Hum- 

 bert have been appointed members of the committee of publication. 



Permit me, in concluding, to recall the kind and delicate sentiments which I 

 cannot but presume to have dictated my nomination to the presidency. Assuredly, 

 I cannot attribute the honor conferred on me to any personal merit of mine, 

 either as physicist or naturalist ; neither could my medical specialty have been 

 an adequate title ; it is to be placed chiefly to the account of your good will in 

 my behalf; but it must be regarded, also, as an acknowledgment which you 

 desired to render to the memory of my venerable father, who, after having been 

 one of the founders of the Society of Physics and Natural History, was one of the 

 principal promoters of the Helvetic Society of the Natural Sciences, encouraged 

 as he was by the support of his honorable colleagues of Geneva. It was, in 

 <'ffect, by the aid of the members of our society and of the honored pastor, Wyt- 

 tinbach, of Berne, that he succeeded in constituting, in 1815, the nomadic and 

 fi aternal association of the Swiss naturalists, which has subsequently served as a 

 model for those international scientific congresses which.have drawn more closely 

 the bonds of union among the savants of Europe. The year 1865 was the 

 fiftieth anniversary of the foundation, and by your presence ai Mornex, in the 

 cradle of the Society, you have given a new sanction to that commemorative 

 festival. 



It only remains for me to thank you, my L-herished and highly esteemed 

 colleagues, for the zealous co-operpiJion which you have never ceased to accord 

 to me as president, a co-operation which has rendered my task as easy as it was 

 agreeable, and to express my ardent hope that our society may continue to be 

 distinguished by its scientific zeal and the inappreciable harmony which has 

 always prevailed among its members. 



