v 
168 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH re 
object, they take a pious pleasure in bringing to light the 
labours and the services of their forerunners. Nor will men 
of the world refuse to sympathize with the intrepid being, 
who, aiming at a laudable object, and pursuing it in the 
midst of extraordinary difficulties and perils, passes through 
adventures of a most singular description, and finally, in 
a strange land, falls the victim of his energy. 
* Peter Martin Remi Aucher, the son of a wine- merchant, 
was born at Blois, on the 2nd Oct., 1793. He received his 
admirable classical education at the college of that city, but 
the slenderness of his patrimony obliging him to choose a 
profession, he studied pharmacy, first at Orleans, and then. 
at Paris, to which latter place he went in 1812. Botany 
that indispensable accessory to the line of life which he had 
selected, possessed particular charms for our young student, 
and he eagerly followed it under the auspices of those great 
masters, Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu and Desfontaines, and 
their kind and admirable lessons produced the impression on 
his mind which was generally felt by all those who were so 
fortunate as to learn under them. 
In 1813, while attached to the service of the army hos- 
pitals in Spain, he contrived to make a collection of the 
plants which grow in that country and the south of France. 
The Peace of 1814 sent him back to Blois ; but, shortly after, 
the revolution of the Hundred Days summoned him to join the 
Army of the North, and he brought home a good many — 
plants after that brief and fatal campaign. Once the passion 
for Natural History takes possession of a man's mind, every 
thing seems to minister to it; food and the most adverse 
circumstances are incapable of annihilating it; and that a 
spring of alternate enjoyment or consolation is found in its 
indulgence. 3 
On his return a second time to his native place, Aucher re- 
sumed his studies with diligence, andin 1817, having married | 
a young lady, named Eloy, belonging, like himself, to a highly 
respectable family in the middle ranks, he from that time, 
according to the custom of that province, added her name. | 
