292 * Jean-Baptiste-André Dumas. 
man who had held such a conspicuous position under the Im- 
perial government was obliged to vacate his place. Some years 
previously he had resigned his seaman os because _ his 
official positions were incompatible with his eae as teacher, 
and now, at the age of seventy, he found himself for the first 
time relieved from ah daily routine of official citer and free 
to devote his leisure to the noble work of ee research, 
He had 
with great effect. In early life he had been elected, in 1832, a 
member of the Academy of Sciences in succession to Serullas; 
in 1868 he had succeeded Flourens as its Permanent Secretary ; 
and in 1875 he was elected a member of the French Academy 
‘as successor to Guizot, a distinction rarely attained by a man 
of at 
as, however, as Permanent Secretary of the Academy of 
Ecionoaa ‘that Dumas 1 during the last years of his life 
his greatest influence was the central figure and the 
ruling spirit of this didinguishad body. No important com- 
mission was complete without him, and on all public occasions 
he was the orator of the body, always felicitous, always elo- 
quent. In announcing vanieelt s’s death to the Academy, M. 
Rolland, the presiding officer, said: 
“Vous savez la part sonaidérabler4 que Dumas prenait a vos 
travaux et vous avez bien souvent admiré, comme moi, la 
inhérentes 4 sa nature et a son caractere. Soo us ce rapport 
aussi la perte de Dumas est irréparable, et erée dans I’ Académie 
un vide bien difficilea combler. Aussi, longtemps encore nous 
chercherong, a la place qu’il occupait au Bureau avec tant d/au- 
torité, la figure sympathiq ue et vénérée de notre bienaimé 
Secrétaire perpétuel.” 
And while Beans was still occupying his conspicuous posi- 
tion in the Academy, one of the most distinguished of his Ger- 
man contemporaries * wrote of him: “ An ever-ready interpre 
ter of the researches of others, he always heightens the — 
of what he communicates by adding from the rich stores of 
own experience, thus often A lights not noticed ot 
by the authors of those researches 
When the writer last saw Dum 8, in the winter of 1881-82, 
the great chemist had still all the vivacity of youth, and it was 
* A. W. Hofmann, in Nature, February 6, 1880, to whose admirable and ex 
tended biography the writer is indebted for much of the material with which this 
notice has been prepared. 
Seen ee 
Pelee rea PS)! WS 2 AR LNT tt ee ce 
