6 BiogtnpMcal Memoir of Michel Adanson. 



would be inclined to form exaggerated ideas of his talents, and 

 would not scruple to express them with freedom. 



What a young man like this would necessarily become, M. 

 Adanson actually realised. Those who have known him must 

 have observed in him whatever of good or of evil there is in the 

 portrait ; and from this character once given, the fate of his 

 works and of his person is almost necessarily deduced. 



On his return to Europe^ which happened on the 18th Fe- 

 bruary 1754, with the rich store of facts and general views 

 which he had amassed, he presently sought to assume the rank 

 among naturalists which he fancied to belong to him. The 

 state of natural history had undergone a remarkable change du- 

 ring his absence. Reaumur was near the close of his life. His 

 ingenious researches found but a feeble and less happily situated 

 continuator in De Gheer. But Linnaeus and BuiFon began to 

 pave the way to die empire which they divided between them 

 for nearly half a century. The one, a man of a penetrating 

 mind, of indefatigable application, grasping all the productions 

 of nature, forced them, as it were, into arbitrary classification, 

 precise, however, and easy to apprehend ; imposed upon them 

 strange names, but invariable, and easily retained in the memo- 

 ry ; described them in a dead language, but in brief and expres- 

 sive words, and having a rigidly determined signification. The 

 other, of an elevated imagination, grave and imposing in his 

 style as in his manners, attaching himself to a smaller number of 

 beings, neglecting those artificial scaffoldings which the study of 

 more numerous productions would have required, exhausted, as 

 it were, each of the subjects which he handled. He traced spirit- 

 ed paintings of them The pomp and the majesty of nature 

 reigned in their arrangement ; her brilliancy and freshness in 

 their colouring. They were connected by new, bold, and some- 

 times rash views, but always elucidated with an art that carried 

 the mind away captive. 



T^e works of Linnaeus, containing in a small bulk an im- 

 mense series of beings of all classes, were the manual of the 

 learned ; those of Buffon, presenting in a suite of enchanting 

 portraits a selection of the most interesting objects, formed the 

 delight of the men of the world. But both of these authors, 

 confining themselves almost exclusively to their own ideas, too 



