PHILIBERT COMMEJRSON. 113 



He spent four years at Montpellier after taking his degree, 

 and in botanizing in the Cevennes, the Pyrenees, and Provence, 

 and on the littoral of the Mediterranean. He soon became 

 known throughout Europe as a naturalist of exceptional talent 

 and experience. He was introduced to Linn?eus and was com- 

 missioned by him to describe the fishes of the Mediterranean for 

 the museum of Queen Louisa Ulrica at Dronningholm, near 

 Stockholm. He prepared a list of all the botanists who had suf- 

 fered in the pursuit of their calling, entitled the Martyrologie de 

 Ja Botanique, in which he came near having his own name re- 

 corded even thus early, having been poisoned by the saliva of his 

 own dog gone mad, and he wrote to one of his friends that he ex- 

 pected some day to figure upon the roll. This work seems never 

 to have been published, and it is not known where the manuscript 

 is. Coming to Dijon in his travels, M. de Beost, an officer of the 

 states of Burgundy, gave him the privileges of his fine garden, 

 glass houses, and library. Having explored Savoy, he visited the 

 mountains of Switzerland, and, calling upon Voltaire at Geneva, 

 received from him the offer of a secretaryship, which he declined. 

 Then he settled down for a time at Chatillon, his native home, 

 where he put himself in communication with correspondents who 

 furnished him seeds and plants. He studied and explored and 

 experimented with a reckless devotion which called forth from 

 Lalande another prediction that his zeal would some day kill him. 

 His overwork resulted in fever, in the convalescence from which 

 he made the acquaintance of the young woman " a sensitive 

 plant," he called her who became his wife : a daughter of M. 

 Jean Beau, who died after two years of happy married life, leav- 

 ing a son who survived him many years. To the memory of his 

 wife, making a fanciful translation of her maiden name. Beau, he 

 dedicated the genus Pulclieria a plant not distinctly identified, 

 but which was described as bearing a fruit that inclosed two 

 kernels united in the shape of two hearts. 



He removed to Paris in 1704, where, introduced by Lalande 

 and Bernard de Jussieu, he was readily welcomed into the inner 

 circle of learned society and gained the position and recognition 

 he merited. In October, 1 766, Commerson was appointed by the 

 French Minister of the Marine, on the recommendation of Pois- 

 sonier and the Abbd Lachapelle, of the Academy of Sciences, 

 "botanist and naturalist of the king" to Bougainville's expe- 

 dition of circumnavigation, then in course of organization at 

 Nantes and Rochefort. The title given him was very grateful to 

 him on account of the privileges it brought ; that of botanist to 

 the king had been conferred on only two or three men of science, 

 and always led to a pension, while that of naturalist was a dis- 

 tinction which no one before him had obtained. He was first 



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