Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/420

406 my post than quit Tonquin just now." He had gone for rest to the Doson Peninsula, a favorite resort of Europeans in Tonquin for recreation, where he had. built him a small house in which "he intended to rest when he should be tired." He suffered a fresh attack of dysentery, from which he died in five days, on the 11th of November, 1886. On the announcement of his death in the Academy of Sciences, addresses were made by President Jurien de la Gravière and M. Vulpian, in which references were made on the great services which he had rendered to science—especially in his researches on the action of light on living organisms; on the physiology of respiration; on the influence exercised on man, animals, plants, and ferments, by increased or diminished pressure of atmospheric air, of carbonic acid, and of oxygen; and on his theory of the physiology of anæsthetics, and his efforts to render absolutely inoffensive the inhalation of protoxide of nitrogen. M. Bert, M. Vulpian added, was endowed with one of the most open minds to be found, and his prodigious facility in work permitted him to bring many tasks to the front. Most of his researches were undertaken and carried to a good result while he seemed to be wholly given up to labors of another kind. What might we not yet have expected from his indefatigable energy?

M. Bert was endowed with an extraordinary capacity for work. Although in his latter days political life seemed to absorb his attention, he found time to receive numerous visitors, to prepare standard works, to write scientific articles, and to keep up a voluminous correspondence. While he was regarded by the general public as harsh and authoritative, he was in private life a man of charming simplicity and a most agreeable conversationalist. His Wednesday evening receptions in his apartments in Paris were most agreeable occasions to all who were privileged to participate in them, and were marked by a free flow of conversation in which the host was among the most lively talkers, and science always held a prominent position. He had, says M. Gaston Tissandier, an absolute faith in himself, and did not believe that his star could be dimmed. He departed for Tonquin with the feeling that he had a great duty to perform, and was glad to believe that the difficulties in the way of his mission would yield before his determination to triumph over them.

Besides the volume on "Barometric Pressure," already referred to, M. Bert's chief publications were "Revue des Travaux d'Anatomie et de Physiologie publié en France pendant l'Année 1864" (Review of the Works on Anatomy and Physiology published in France during the Year 1864), 1866; "Notes d'Anatomie et Physiologie comparées" (Notes on Comparative Anatomy and Physiology), second series, 1867-'70; "Recherches sur la Mouvement de