16 Biographical Memoi7^ of Michel Adanson 



obvious from the details which he has borrowed from it in his 

 Treatise on Vegetable Physiology and Agriculture. He also 

 entered into a long investigation on the unequal expansion of 

 thermometers filled with different fluids. 



Nor did he neglect the application of natural history or physics 

 to the useful arts. He first discovered the means of extracting 

 a good blue fecula from the indigo of Senegal. In a memoir 

 addressed to the ministry, he shewed that this colony would be 

 very favourable to all the productions of our islands, and even to 

 those of India, and that it would be easy to have them cultivated 

 there by free negroes, a happy idea, and the only one capable 

 of putting an end to a commerce so disgraceful to humanity. A 

 society of English and Swedes, animated by a religious senti- 

 ment, made a trial of this plan some years ago, and we are even 

 assured that the establishment still exists, although part of it 

 has been destroyed by pirates. Should it ever happen that 

 the consequences of the last revolutions, and the present state of 

 the sugar islands, should at length induce the European govern- 

 ments to proscribe a system at once so cruel for the slaves, and 

 so dangerous for the masters, it would be but justice to remem- 

 ber that M. Adanson was one of the first who made known the 

 means of supplanting it, without losing any thing of our enjoy- 

 ments. Although neither the ministry of France, nor the Afri- 

 can Company, paid any attention to this memoir, M. Adanson 

 refused, from patriotic motives, to communicate it to the En- 

 glish, who had offered him a considerable recompence. 



These various morsels, all interesting, might have been fol- 

 lowed by many others, had M. Adanson been so inclined. His 

 travels, his cabinet, and his "continual observations, would have 

 furnished him with sufficient materials for such a purpose. 



BuiFon made known several African quadrupeds and birds, 

 which were communicated to him by Adanson. M. Geoffroi 

 de St Hilaire, who described the galago, a very extraordinary 

 species of the family of quadrumana, apprises us that M. Adan- 

 son had long been in possession of it. We are assured that he had 

 the Ethiopian boar long before AUamand and Pallas described 

 it ; and his numerous fortfolios are still full of similar subjects. 

 But all these treasures, and, however melancholy the reflection, 

 M. Adanson himself, were lost to science and society, from the 



