2 Memoirs of DeCandolle. 
tinued, at considerable intervals down to his last year, and evi- 
dently with a growing expectation of future publication,—they 
ave appeared none too soon to secure the most interested, but 
rapidly narrowing circle of readers. The outer circle, however, 
is as wide as ever, embracing all the lovers of botany in our day, 
to none of whom can the name of DeCandolle be indifferent. The 
memoirs portray, not so much the botanist as the man. Indeed, 
the perusal was rather disappointing to us in the former regard. 
We expected to get fresh glimpses of his mind at work upon 
the problems of the time, and to watch the rise and development 
of the ideas which brought him fame. That could be had, how- 
ever, only from letters, diaries, or other contemporary records: 
these are only reminiscences. On this account, too, and perhaps 
because the record was made with only a dim and distant view 
to paca the narrative somehow has not all the vivacity 
and sprightliness, nor the ready flow of language, nor the afflu- 
ence of anecdote, which those who personally knew the writer 
would have expected. There are, however, many favorable 
specimens of DeCandolle’s powers of delineation, and some 
amusing anecdotes or interesting recollections of distinguished 
savans and others. 
The family of DeCandoile (to retain the style of orthography 
which is kept up at Geneva, in which the De is written as a sub- 
stantial part of the name) is an old and noble one in Provence; 
and a branch of it, reaching Naples in the thirteenth century in 
the suite of the Anjou princes, flourished there, under a name 
gradually changed from Candola to Caldora, down to the middle 
of the sixteenth century. Augustin-Pyramus DeCandolle derived 
one of his baptismal names from his ancestor, Pyramus de Can- 
dolle, who, becoming protestant, fled from Provence to Geneva 
in the year 1591, following an uncle who had already been estab- 
lished there for thirty or forty years. Augustin was the name 
of his father, in his earlier days a Genevan banker, a member of 
the state council, military syndic, and, about the time of the 
outbreak of the French Revolution, Premier Syndic of the little 
republic. Displaced by an earlier coup d’efat just as he was about 
to enter upon the duties of this office, he had retired into the 
country just in time to escape the worst perils of the woful im1- 
tation at Geneva of the reign of terror, in July, 1794, although 
he was condemned to death for contumacy, and his property in 
the city for a time sequestrated. The rest of his life was peaceful 
and long: he attained the age of 84 years, and died in 1820. 
Augustin-Pyramus, the writer of this auto-biograpby, appears 
_ to have been remarkable in his boyhood rather for quickness of 
_ learning than for scholarship. His early tastes were for belles- 
lettres and a . Specimens of his poetical productions, both 
of his youtk of maturer years, are appended to the volume. 
