PHILIBERT COMMERSON. 115 



tlie strait of Magellan. Thence they they went northwesterly 

 into the Pacific Ocean ; passed the Paumotu, or Low Archipelago ; 

 and visited Tahiti, of which Commerson has left a famous de- 

 scription in a letter to Lalande ; continued to sail westwardly ; 

 sighted Samoa ; were perplexed by the Great Barrier Reef, and 

 had to make a back track along the Louisiade Archipelago to the 

 Solomon Islands ; between New Britain and New Ireland ; along 

 the northern shores of Papua ; thence to Batavia; and finally, to 

 Port Louis. Here M. Poivre, intendant of the colony, had orders 

 from the authorities at home to retain Commerson for service 

 under his direction ; while Vdron, the astronomer, was directed 

 to proceed to India, to observe the forthcoming transit of Venus. 

 Commerson was the first European to ascend the native volcano 

 of Bourbon and to make a complete collection of mineralogical 

 specimens from its hardly accessible craters. His account of a 

 pygmy tribe inhabiting the mountain regions of Madagascar, 

 after having been long contradicted, has recently been confirmed 

 by the Rev. E. O. MacMahon, of the Society for the Propagation 

 of the Gos]3el. 



Commerson's career now soon came to an end. Among 

 the results of political changes in the colony and in France 

 were the withdrawal of ministerial patronage from him, the 

 stoppage of his salary as naturalist to the king, and his dis- 

 missal. His health had already given way in consequence of the 

 exposures to which he had subjected himself, and he was suffer- 

 ing from dysentery and rheumatism. He gave himself up to the 

 study of the flora of Mauritius, writing to his friend Lemeunier : 

 '' My plants, my dear plants, have consoled me for all. I have 

 found the nepenthe, the sweet assuagement of cares." He sought 

 rest in another part of the island, but died, March 14, 1773, at the 

 house of M. Bezac, a planter, near Flacq. 



Commerson left his collections of plants, fishes, minerals, and 

 manuscripts, thirty-two cases in all, to the Royal Museum of Natu- 

 ral History in Paris. They included, with two hundred folio vol- 

 umes of herbaria, five thousand plants, of which three thousand 

 species and one hundred and sixty genera were new to science. 



In a collection made by Captain W. G. Thorold in Thibet of plants growing 

 at elevations between 15,000 and 19,000 feet, fiftv-seven, or one half, were found 

 between 17,000 and 18,000 feet, five between 18,000 and 19,000, and one, Sam- 

 surea tridactyla^ at 19,000 feet. A large majority of the plants hardly lift them- 

 selves above the surface, the characteristic type being a rosette of small leaves 

 closely appressed to the ground with a central sessile infiorescenee. Judging from 

 the fact that many of the species are found in the most widely separated parts of 

 the country, there must be very few local species ; and the circumstances indicate 

 that the distribution marks the remains of a once probably much richer flora. 



