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great grandson, the subject of the present notice, who was displaced 

 from it by the troubles of the Revolution, which involved him, at 

 least for a time, in the common proscription of the aristocracy of 

 France. The shock of these sad events seems to have diverted his 

 mind from scientific pursuits, for we find his name connected with 

 no research in astronomy or geodesy during the last half-century. 



The Comte de Cassini completed the celebrated map of France 

 which had been begun by his father. He published an account of 

 voyages which he made in 1768 and 1769, for the trial of the 

 marine chronometers of Le Roy, and a memoir " Sur I'influence de 

 I'equinoxe du printemps et du solstice d'ete sur les declinaisons et 

 les variations de I'aiguille aimantee :" he superintended and pub- 

 lished an account of the observations which were made in 1789, by 

 a commission appointed for that purpose, for the junction of the 

 Observatories of Paris and Greenwich, with a special reference to 

 the connection of the Geodetical Survey of France which had been 

 made by his father, with the corresponding Survey of England which 

 was at that time in progress under General Roy : he was the author 

 likewise of " Memoires pour servir a I'Histoire des Sciences et a 

 celle de I'Observatoire Royal de Paris, suivis de la Vie de Jaques 

 Dominique Cassini, premier du nom." 



With him have terminated the honours of the house of Cassini, 

 though he was not the last of his race who distinguished himself in 

 the career of the sciences ; his son, Henri Cassini, an upright and 

 enlightened judge in the Cour Royale and the Cour de Cassation, 

 and one of the most learned botanists of his age, fell a victim to the 

 cholera in 1 833, and with him died the last stay of the old age of 

 his father: he was the fifth of his family who had been elected a 

 member of the Academic des Sciences. He was a boy at the break- 

 ing out of the Revolution, and was compelled, from a regard to his 

 personal safety, to live in the strictest retirement at his father's domain 

 of Thury ; a circumstance which turned his attention to the cultiva- 

 tion of Natural Flistory and Botany, and diverted him, as he was 

 accustomed to lament, from those studies and pursuits which formed, 

 as it were, the proper and hereditary honours of his family. 



Theodore de Saussure was born in Geneva the 14th of Octo- 

 ber, 1767. His father, known throughout the civilized world as the 

 geological explorer of the Alps, who first reared observatories on 

 heights almost inaccessible, and who inscribed his name on the 

 eternal snows of the loftiest mountain in Europe, was by profession 

 a physician. Being animated with an ardent love for science, which 

 he cultivated most assiduously, it is not a matter of surprise that after 

 entrusting his son for a short time to a private tutor, he should have 

 undertaken personally his education, so far as to enable him to enter 

 the Academy of Geneva, where young De Saussure soon distin- 

 guished himself. Previously to this period, his father had caused 

 him to study medicine, mineralogy, and natural history ; and had 

 also inspired him with a taste for experimental chemistry, which he 



