Biographical Memoir of Michel Adanson. IS 



tually changing ; and it is upon the orthography alone that the 

 duration and extent of a language repose. To prove this, let 

 us ask what, for example, would have become of the Latin, had 

 each nation thought proper to write that language in the man- 

 ner in which it pronounced it ? 



Thus, notwithstanding the real and acknowledged beauty of 

 the plan which he followed, and the great number of facts which 

 he discovered, notwithstanding the praises which his work re- 

 ceived from the most learned naturalists, M. Adanson was far 

 from obtaining that influence over the progress of science to 

 which he was certainly entitled, and the artificial systems still 

 reigned almost exclusively for more than thirty years. But, far 

 from being repelled by this want of success, he scarcely took 

 notice of it. Then, as during the rest of his life, his own opi- 

 nion sufficed to satisfy him ; and always labouring with the same 

 ardour, his families of plants were not entirely printed, when 

 he was already engaged in an infinitely more general work. 



The boldest imagination would recoil on reading the plan 

 which he submitted, in 1774, to the judgment of the Acade- 

 mic des Sciences, and still more on seeing the enormous heap of 

 materials which he had actually collected. His object was now 

 no longer to apply his universal method to one class only, to 

 one kingdom, or even to what are commonly called the three 

 kingdoms, but to embrace the whole compass of nature, in the 

 most extended signification of the word. The waters, the me- 

 teors, the stars, the objects of chemical science, even the facul- 

 ties of the mind, and the creations of human ingenuity, all that 

 commonly forms the subject of metaphysics, moral philosophy, 

 and politics, all the arts from agriculture to dancing, were to be 

 treated of in this gigantic undertaking. 



The very numbers were frightful. Twenty-seven large vo- 

 lumes exposed the general relations of all these subjects, and the 

 distribution of their various objects. The history of 40,000 

 species was arranged in alphabetical order in 150 volumes. A 

 universal vocabulary gave the explanation of 200,000 words. 

 The whole was accompanied by a great number of particular 

 treatises and memoirs, by 40,000 figures, and 30,000 fragments 

 of the three kingdoms. 



Every one put the question to himself, how a single individual 



