xxii Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. 
after the publication of some botanical notes of minor importance, 
we find him in 1830 as the author of his first work on systematic 
botany, a monograph of the Campanulacege. This included, in 
addition to the more purely systematic treatment of the family, a 
very complete statement of the facts relating to its geographical 
distribution, and thus it foreshadowed the work which the author 
was in later years to accomplish in the two spheres of purely 
systematic botany, and of botanical geography. 
Alphonse de Candolle was for a considerable time officially con- 
nected with the University of Geneva. In 1831 he was appointed 
honorary professor, with the duty of assisting his father in the 
management of the Botanic Garden, as well as in academic affairs. 
In 1835 he was appointed ordinary professor in his father’s place, a 
post which he held till 1850, when he retired from the exacting 
duties of teaching to labours in the more direct advancement of his 
science. 
The Prodr omus, already planned by Aug.-Pyr. de Candolle, had 
reached its seventh volume when Alphonse de Candolle began to 
participate in its production. Prom that point onwards he con- 
tributed largely from his own pen to the monographs, while after 
his father’s death in 1841 the editorship of the great work was 
entirely in his hands. The whole series of 17 volumes (1824-1873) 
consists of 13,194 printed pages; of these Alphonse de Candolle 
contributed 1387 pages, dealing with 45 families, 438 genera, 
and 5511 species. Those who are acquainted with such work will 
from these figures form some estimate of the great area of observa- 
tion and accurate description over which he must have spread his 
energies. 
During the half century over which the publication of the 
Prodromus extended, botany had been steadily advancing, and the 
advance is reflected in the style of the writing put into it by de 
Candolle and his collaborators. The descriptions become less brief, 
and more attention is given to the geographical distribution of the 
species. It is true that comparative morphology, development, and 
anatomy do not figure largely, for such branches of the science 
were in their infancy at the time when the idea of Prodromus was 
conceived. It was inevitable that, in a work of which the publica- 
tion of the first part was necessarily separated from the later by so 
