60 
Proceedings of the Royal Society 
during six weeks or two months of my stay on the shores of the 
beautiful lake. In those days we used to call him Fouche^ in virtue 
of his oiBSce as Minister of Police. I owed to him at that time my 
introduction to the society of Coppet, and the kind and sustained 
friendship of Madame de Stael. There, with Schlegel, Sismondi, 
Dupont, Sir H and Lady Davy, Lady Charlotte Campbell and 
her daughter, Louis and I formed two of the dramatis jpersonce in 
acting little plays arranged by our hostess from the lesser poems of 
Byron.”* 
I find that in 1820 he made an excursion to Italy. Indeed, he 
not improbably had passed the previous winter there, though I do 
not know the occasion. At all events he visited Mount Vesuvius 
in April ; and he then made interesting observations on the dykes 
or injected lavas of Monte Somma, his account of which f still 
remains classical, and connects itself with his studies of Huttonian 
geology in Scotland. 
In 1821 he at last brought out his work on Scotland, and having 
thus relieved himself of a task of which he had no doubt long felt 
the weight, he set himself seriously to what he no doubt considered 
the main business of his life — the study of the geology of the Alps, 
in continuation and verification of the labours of his grandfather, 
De Saussure, whose academic chair he had for some years occupied. J 
He had previously travelled in Switzerland from time to time with 
geological objects in view, but from and after 1821 (as he himself 
tells us) he made regularly two annual excursions, one in the early § 
part of summer in the lower and outlying parts of the chain, and 
another towards autumn in the higher Alps. He justly remarks 
that the importance of the study of the inferior and external parts 
of the range was at that time not fully appreciated, and still less, 
perhaps, the excessive fatigue, heat, and even peril, attending the 
investigation, step by step, of these rugged calcareous mountains, 
which fully equal in height, even when allowance is made for their 
elevated bases, the highest mountains of Britain. In all these 
cases he examined on foot, and step by step, the range of country 
^ From a letter of Mr Gumming Bruce. 
t Mem. de la Soc. de Phys. de Geneve, tome ii. 
X One of his public academical addresses, delivered in 1821, has been pre- 
served {Bibliotheque Universelle, 1824). 
§ Etudes Geol. sur les Alpes. Preface. 
