SAUSSURE, HORACE BENEDICT DE, the soil Of Ni cholas de Saussure, celebrated for his agricultural writings, was born at Geneva in 1740. From Conches, where his father resided, about half a league from Ge neva, young Saussure went daily to Geneva to receive the rudiments of his education. His leisure hours were spent in climbing the precipices and exploring the recesses of the lofty mountains which overhung his dwelling, and he was thus led at an early period of life to devote himself to those studies which necessarily as sociated themselves with his early habits. His pas sion for natural history was greatly increased by his connexion with M. Bonnet who married his aunt, one of the family of De la Rive, and who was at that time engaged in his enquiries concerning the action of the upper and under leaves of plants, of which he publish ed an account in 1754 in his Reeherches sill- l'usage des Feuilles dans les ponies. Young Saussure constantly took a keen interest in these researches, but he pursu ed the subject farther than his relation, and published an account of his labours in his Observations on the bark and leaves of plants.
In the year 1762, when he was only in the twenty second year of his age, he was appointed professor of philosophy at Geneva, a situation which he held for twenty-five years. During the intervals between his lectures, he devoted himself to the examination of the mountains of Switzerland, and to those enquiries re specting their physical geography which have immor talized his name. So early as 1769, he had visited the glaciers of Chamouni, and in 1779 he had crossed the principal chains of the Alps about fourteen times in different directions. These journeys were not per formed in the slovenly and ignorant manner so com mon among geologists in modern times. Saussure pre pared himself for these expeditions by study as well as by judicious arrangements. He equipped himself with accurate instruments of every kind. He invented and constructed new ones, with which science could not furnish him; and while he attended to the phenomena of the rocks upon which he trod—to the distribution and altitude of the mountain masses which he travers ed—to the phenomena of the snow and the ice with which they were covered, he studied with equal inte rest and success the phenomena of the blue expanse under which they lay—the electricity and humidity of the atmosphere, and those various meteorological phe nomena which since his time only have occupied so much of the attention of philosophers.
In the year 1779, Saussure published the first vo lume of his royages clans les .41ps, which contains a minute description of the neighbourhood of Geneva, and an account of his excursion to Chamouni.
During the troubles with which Geneva was agitated in 1782, Saussure devoted himself to a series of re searches connected with the subject of Hygrometry. In order to carry on these, he invented his new hygro meter, which, if we except Air. Daniell's instrument, is the best that has ever been constructed. An account of these researches were published in 1783, in his Essai Sur l' Hygrometric, in 1 vol. 4to.* About this time Saussure became so much occupied with his own studies, that he resigned his chair to the late M. A. Pictet who continued to discharge its duties with the highest credit and success till his death in 1825.t Saussure was DOW able to follow, without in terruption, the pursuits to which he was so much at tached, and was enabled to publish, in 1786, the second volume of his travels among the Alps, which contains an account of Mont Blanc and the surrounding moun tains.
Though engrossed with his philosophical pursuits, Saussure tuuk a great interest in the state of education at Geneva. He projected a new system, one of the principal objects ol' which was to make the youth ac quainted with Mathematics and the natural sciences at an early period of life; but though this plan met with much approbation, it was considered to be an innova tion too hazardous to be put in practice. Saussure had the merit of founding the Society of .Ilrts at Gene va, to the operation of which Geneva is said to be much indebted for its present prosperity.