CLAPAREDE, Jean Louis René AntoineÉdouard, (1832-1870), an eminent naturalist, was born at Geneva, April 24, 1832, and belonged to an ancient family of that city. His father was pastor of the parish of Chancy, and Edouard’s early years were spent in that village. After a distinguished course at the classical college, the gymnasium, and the academy of his native city, he repaired in 1852 to the university of Berlin, and there devoted himself with self-sacrificing ardour to the study of medicine and the natural sciences and the acquisition of the Germanic languages of Northern Europe. The direction of his investigations was greatly affected by J. Müller and Ehrenberg, the former of whom was at that period engaged in his important researches about the Echinoderms. In 1855 he accompanied Müller to Norway, and there spent two months on a desolate reef that he might obtain satisfactory observations. The latter part of his stay at Berlin he devoted, along with Lachmann, to the study of the Infusoria and Rhizopods; and their united labours resulted in an important publication which at once gave them rank among the chief zoologists of the day. In 1857 he obtained the degree of doctor, and soon after he was chosen professor of comparative anatomy in the academy of Geneva. Here he continued to teach with ever growing acceptance; and he even became a favourite of the general public through his popular lectures. In 1859 he visited England, and, in company with Dr Carpenter, took a voyage to the Hebrides; and in 1863 he spent some months in the Bay of Biscay. On the appearance of Darwin’s work on the Origin of Species, he adopted his theories and published a valuable series of articles on the subject in the Revue Germanique, 1861. His enormous activity might seem to indicate ...