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152 PUBLIC MUSEUM.
There is an excellent botanical garden,
well arranged, under the superintendance
of M. de Candolle. A public museum is
forming, intended to comprise the animal
and mineral kingdoms, and a considerable
number of animals and mineral specimens
are already collected and arranged. To the
museum is attached a library for the use
of subscribers, and also a reading room
and news room, in which all the periodical
scientific journals in Europe are taken in,
with the French, Italian, and German
newspapers. To this room, strangers, properly
introduced, are admitted gratis. Annexed
to the reading-room, is a room for
conversation and chess. These rooms are
open from nine o’clock in the morning to
ten or eleven in the evening, and are a
most agreeable accommodation to those
who may spend a few months in Geneva.
The last winter I was at Geneva, a course
may take private lessons in his museum, -where they
may gain a knowledge of the system of Lamarck, and
cannot fail to be pleased with the agreeable manners and
intelligence of their instructor. M. De Luc is advantageously
known by his able illustration of Hannibal’s
passage over the Alps, published about four years
since.
Î
LECTURES.
of lectures on natural history, by subscription,
was delivered for the benefit of
the Museum, the different departments
being undertaken by six gentlemen, without
any emolument. M. de Candolle lectured
on the mammalia and crustácea, following
chiefly the arrangement of Cuvier,
in his Règne Animal, but with some slight
difference in the collocation of the orders.
His lectures were extemporaneous ; and the
clearness, rapidity, and eloquence, with
which he illustrated his subjects, were not
less surprising than delightful. By way of
enlivening the description of the structure
of animals, he introduced many interesting
particulars respecting what he called
leur morale, or their natural dispositions,
and the changes they underwent when
under the dominion of man. Among other
instances of the strong aifection which tame
wolves had sometimes shown to their masters,
he mentioned one which took place in
the vicinity of Geneva. A lady, Madame
M., had a tame wolf, which seemed to
have as much attachment to its mistress as
a spaniel. She had occasion to leave home
for some weeks ; the wolf evinced the
greatest distress after her departure, and