Memoirs of DeCandolle. 3 
Of their merit we cannot pretend to judge. At the age of six- 
teen he happened to attend a few lectures of a short course on 
otany, given by Vaucher,—who, living to a venerable age, sur- 
vived his distinguished pupil. Here he learned the names of the 
parts of the flower, but nothing whatever of classification, having 
gone into the country for the summer before that portion of the 
course was reached. But his curiosity was awakened; and in 
his leisure hours he began to collect, observe, and even to describe. 
the plants he met with in his rambles, at first without any botan- 
ical book whatever to guide him, and without any idea beyond 
that of amusement or relaxation. The next winter, returning 
to Geneva and to his college studies, he came to know Saussure, 
then in his last years and half paralytic. The veteran physicist, 
while he endeavored to attract the young man to scientific pur- 
Suits, discouraged his predilection for botany. That he regarded 
as quite unworthy of serious attention. Another summer passed 
upon the side of the Jura, however, and the perusal of Duhamel’s 
Physique des Arbres, of the Researches upon Leaves of the pastor 
Bonnet (a friend of his father), also of Hale’s Vegetable Statics, 
which he painfully translated from the English, and finally the 
acquisition of the Linné de l'Europe of Gilibert—in which the 
Linnzan artificial classification even then annoyed him by its 
Mcongruity with the natural relationships which he already 
of Fourcroy and Vauquelin upon Chemistry, of Portal and Cu- 
Vier upon anatomy, and of Hauy upon mineralogy, it was 
at this early period that his acquaintance and life-long = 
amarck being just then wholly occupied with the discussion of 
chemical theories. When DeCandolle returned to Geneva in 
