little plan was adopted to draw the celebrated zoologist and botanist into conversation. De Candolle asked his friend Pictet, who afterwards became a professor at Geneva and a great man, to come by chance as it were and sit beside him at the same table as Lamarck, and they began a conversation about botany. De Candolle especially stated how useful he had found a book called the “Description of the French Plants” in his studies. This was overheard by Lamarck, who was the author of it, and he joined in the conversation. Lamarck asked the young man to come and see him, and a friendship commenced; and although they did not have at that time much to say to one another about botany, still the distinguished French naturalist gave good advice, and, when De Candolle left Paris, presented him with a letter and a book to give to M. Sénebier, of Geneva, whose friendship probably decided the future career of the rising young botanist. Certainly the acquaintance of Lamarck stimulated De Candolle to study the physiology of plants—how they grow, breathe, how the sap circulates, how the colours are produced, and how the young seeds are formed. The happy circumstances which surrounded the young man at Paris enabled him to see the great comedies of the day and to admire the splendid acting at the theatres. But he was a philosopher then, and he could not but be struck with the furious gaiety of society and the great frivolity of the day, and with that careless method of living and thinking which followed as a kind of revulsion on the awful scenes of the Revolution and the Reign of Terror. In the spring of 1797, De Candolle returned to Geneva. There he studied the physiology of plants with M. Sénebier, going to his father’s house in the holidays, which were spent in botanical excursions. In one of these, on the Jura Mountains, De Candolle discovered a new fungus of a beautiful red colour, and his adventure in obtaining the specimen was very characteristic of the man. On the sides of those hills are many very precipitous trough-like paths, down which the wood-cutters pass the fir trees they cut high up on the mountains, to the valleys. They are rugged at the sides, and have really been worn out of the hills by running water and the rushing downwards of the trees. Active people can slide down these “couloirs” by sitting on a stick placed between one’s legs, and down went young De Candolle in that fashion. As he rushed along, he saw a beautiful red plant on a branch of a tree overhanging the couloir, and as he slid down he managed to cut the branch and obtain his prize—his first new plant to describe. But it was done at the expense of his clothes, which got torn off from him in many parts, by the rocks, so that he had to slink home to avoid being seen. Working hard at botany, the young enthusiast had very agreeable hours of relaxation. He was in the midst of a charming homely society; and there is no doubt that his purity of character and thorough honesty of