results, and what was still more important, a new method. Saussure adopted for the most part the quantitative mode of dealing with questions of nutrition; and as the questions which he put were thus rendered more definite, and his experiments were conducted in a most masterly manner, he succeeded in obtaining definite answers. He knew how to manage his experiments in such a manner that the results were sure to speak plainly for themselves; they had not to be brought out by laborious calculation from those small and, as they are called, exact data, which less skilful experimenters use to hide their own uncertainty. The directness and brevity with which precise quantitative results are expressed, the close reasoning and transparent clearness of thought, impart to the reader of de Saussure's works a feeling of confidence and security such as he receives from scarcely any other writer on these subjects from the time of Hales to our own. The 'Recherches chimiques' have this in common with Hales' 'Statical Essays,' that the statements of facts which they contain have been made use of again and again by later writers for theoretical purposes, while the theoretical connexion between them was constantly overlooked, as we shall have reason to learn in the following section. It is not every one who can follow a work like this, which is no connected didactic exposition of the theory of nutrition, but a series of experimental results which group themselves round the great questions of the subject, while the theoretical connection is indicated in short introductions and recapitulations, and it is left to the reader to form his own convictions by careful study of all the details. It was not de Saussure' intention to teach the science, but to lay its foundations; not to communicate facts, but to establish them;
part also in public affairs, being repeatedly elected to the Council of Geneva. His preference for a secluded life is said to have been the reason why he never undertook the duties of a professorship. See the supplement to the 'Biographie Universelle' and Poggendorf s 'Biographisch-litterarisches Handworterbuch.'
