VI 



that we should one day see in the substance of a hard and translucent 

 stone indications of the sap which had, in former ages, circulated 

 in the delicate vessels of a living plant, of the grains of pollen burst- 

 ing from the anthers, and of the presence of the minute ovules 

 where appearing. In his memoir on this subject, the last he ever 

 published, Brongniart not only disclosed the evidence of a remarkable 

 and varied gymnospermous vegetation in Carboniferous times, but the 

 structure preserved in these Palaeozoic plants led him to suspect the 

 existence of a curious and hitherto unobserved detail in the organiza- 

 tion of the ovule of living Gymnosperms. After having satisfac- 

 torily shown that the beautifully silicified tissues of the plants of 

 St. Btienne belonged to plants of which we find analogous species in 

 Mexico, he confidently asserted that a peculiarity, a cavity for the 

 reception of the pollen, never previously observed in living specimens, 

 would be found in the species of that country, and he subsequently 

 had the satisfaction of exhibiting, to the Academie Francaise, some 

 plants living in the hothouses of the Museum which had a pollen 

 cavity of which a plant dead countless ages ago had furnished us with 

 the first example. 



Brongniart did not live to complete this important research. The 

 decline of his health first manifested itself in a failure of sight brought 

 on by excessive use of the microscope, and he owed it to the assistance 

 of his friends and colleagues, Messieurs Bureau, Cornu, Renault, 

 Grand d'Eury, and other friends, that he was able to work on at the 

 investigation as long as he did. From the time of the siege of Paris 

 his health, affected by the privations and sufferings he then underwent, 

 steadily declined, but he retained to the end of his life his tranquillity 

 of mind, his intellect, and his memory. He took an affectionate 

 interest in the progress of a grandson, whose first steps in the career 

 of science he hoped to guide. At length, in February, 1876, fore- 

 seeing that his end was near, he desired to be surrounded by his 

 family, and expired in the arms of his eldest son. 



Less fortunate than his father, Adolphe Brongniart had, some years 

 previously, lost the affectionate wife whom he had married in early 

 life. He left two sons and several grand-children. 



The herbarium left by A. Brongniart has been placed in the 

 Botanical Gallery (of Paris), and his unique and beautiful collection 

 of fossil plants forms one of its greatest ornaments. 



Brongniart was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences in 

 1834, in the place of Desfontaines, and in the same year he was 

 appointed Professor of Vegetable Physiology in the Museum of 

 Natural History. In 1840 he was appointed a foreign member of the 

 Geological Society of London, and in the following year he received 

 the Wollaston Medal, in consideration of his important works on 

 fossil plants. In 1852 he was elected a foreign member of the 



