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Felix Avellar Brotero was born in Lisbon in 1745. We are 

 ignorant of the history of his early youth, but have reason to be- 

 lieve that he received an excellent education. The accuracy and 

 elegance with which he wrote his Latin works, the correct diction 

 of his Portuguese, added to the copious historical notices with 

 which he enriched them, prove that he possessed high intellectual 

 powers, improved by well directed literary training. 



Desirous of further instruction he visited Prance in the year 

 1778. When he settled in Paris he was thirty-three years of age, 

 and well qualified, in his literary attainments, to profit by the 

 advantages afforded in that celebrated school*. 



The study of the natural sciences, especially of Botany, occupied 

 all his attention, and he socn gave evidence of the progress which 

 he had made in this department, by publishing at Paris, in 1788, 

 his " Compendio de Botanica, on Nocbes Elementares desta Scien- 

 cia segundo os melhores Escriptores Modernos, ecepostos na lengua 

 Portugiteza." This well written work was the first, and is still the 

 only elementary botanical one, in the Portuguese language. The 

 preliminary discourse, on the origin, progress, and present state of 

 Botany, called forth the approbation of Link, a distinguished Ger- 

 man writer, always severe in his remarks on Portuguese affairs. 



Besides the above-mentioned work, Brotero, while residing in 

 Paris, entered upon several other literary undertakings, and among 

 them a valuable English and Portuguese Dictionary. He was also 

 the writer of the learned corrections and all the nomenclature of 

 the Thesauro de Meninos, written in French for Blanchard and 

 translated into Portuguese and published in Lisbon in 1817 f. 



be accomplished. Such is Senhor Guzmao's account of the matter, and either 

 the Professor or the University is much to blame, for when we visited the Garden 

 in March last, it was in a miserable condition and barely deserved the name of a 

 Botanic Garden. 



* This is a most unfair statement on the part of the biographer. From this 

 and the preceding paragraph one would be apt to conclude that Brotero travelled 

 from choice, or perhaps even at the expense of the Government, while the reverse 

 is the fact. After the fall of Pombal, a party, hostile to all improvement, came 

 into power, that viewed men of science with jealousy and dislike, and let loose 

 the Inquisition upon them. The celebrated mathematician and poet, J. M. de 

 Nascimiento, fortunately escaping from the individual who was sent to apprehend 

 him, fled to France, where the two botanists, Brotero and Correa de Serra, were 

 also obliged to take refuge. 



t We have again to complain of the unaccountable mystery in which Senhor 

 Gusmao envelopes the most interesting incidents in the life of Brotero. The 

 very circumstance of such a man, residing in France, during so important a period 

 of human life as that comprehended between thirty-three and forty-five years of 

 age, and spending his time in compiling dictionaries and such works as the 

 ' Child's Treasury (Thesauro de Meninos), plainly shows that he supported him- 

 self by his literary labours during an exile of twelve years. 



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