RECORDS 



OF 



GENERAL SCIENCE 



APRIL, 1835. 



Article I, 



Biographical Account of M. Desfontaines. By Aug-Pyr De 

 Candolle. {Abridged from the Ann. des Scien. Naturelles, 

 March 1834.) 



Rene Louiche Desfontaines was born at Tremblay, in 

 the department Ille-et-Vilaine, in Brittany, a town dis- 

 tinguished as being the birth-place of the anatomist Bertin. 

 His birth-day it is impossible to ascertain, as the registers 

 of Tremblay were destroyed during the revolution. He 

 was himself of opinion, that he first saw the light towards 

 the end of 1751, or beginning of 1752. His father, though 

 poor, exerted himself for the purpose of giving him as good 

 an education as possible, and sent him to school in his native 

 town, where he learned a little Latin. The master also 

 endeavoured to form his morals, but treated him in the 

 harshest manner, reprimanding and punishing him for 

 the slightest faults, and grating his ears with the dis- 

 couraging cry that he was good for nothing. One day he 

 was threatened with severe punishment for having taken 

 some apples from a garden, and in order to escape from his 

 master, made his escape by a window and fled to his father's 

 house. What was the embarrassment then of his family? 

 What shall we do, they exclaimed, with this refractory boy 

 w ho resists all chastisement and is fit for nothing 1 His 

 father, persuaded by the opinion of the master, and believ- 

 ing that his son was not capable of making any progress in 



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