211 
REMINISCENCES OF ALPHONSE DECANDOLLE. 
By ©. Baron Crarke, F.R.S. 
You have asked me to supply some personal a of 
M. Alphonse 5 gre lle. I willingly send you all t an call 
to mind ; but t sda are only approximate, and thers a doubt- 
less other i oan due to imperfection of mem 
nly made the acquaintance of M. Alpho ches De Candolle i 
(or about) 1878, when I went to his house (the old family house in 
the Cathedral Square, Geneva) to do some botanic wor rk in his 
b i 
Prodromus rests, and from which the pao is drawn. 
remaining (much larger) portion of the herbarium is fear 
as a a oon neral herbarium—the natural orders in the DeCandollean 
seq 
T Nothing could exceed the kind attention which M. Alphonse 
DeCandolle paid me on my first entering his herbarium—I need 
hardly add, also on subsequent visits. He was always ready to 
in good order in m sked, ‘* Now, is there any way in 
hich I can assist in this work?” After a — work in 
June, he insisted (the weather being very fine) o y taking 
a botanic ramble in the neighbourhood of Geneva, ‘ena poo the 
curator of his herbarium to take me to me Southern Jura above 
Nantua. It was certainly botany i easy ; the curator led me 
before a bed of wild flowers, and expla ee “It wi on this very 
t vi reel and youneda ooking for his 
years, and getting through a large quality of literary seme fetes 
and correspondence ; and in a letter which he wrote me 
very few weeks before his death, he told me that he ‘eee his 
health, nearly emer” ay till about six or tik before his death, 
when he became w 
As regards all the ‘events of his life up to his seventies year, 
I can only give you imperfect recollections of what he told me in 
conversations. Were my memory good, I ought to be able to 
furnish a Sess cone biography thereou 
s but one DeCandolle family, at the time of the 
fotraetiens deltled ¢ ox ftv estate in France. Out of a numerous 
family of sons, three (placed in a monastery) became Protestants, 
and travelled in ee France advocating the principles of the 
Reformation. One of the three was killed in a riot raised against 
them, and the other ea then settled at Geneva. One of these two 
proved a successful man, and built the family house in the Cathedral 
P2 
