Biographical Memoir of Michel Adanson. S 



kions, — compiled grammars and dictionaries of the languages 

 spoken on its banks, — kept a register of meteorological observa- 

 tions, made several times each day, — composed a detailed trea- 

 tise comprehending all the useful plants of the country, — ^and 

 collected all the objects of its commerce, together with the arms, 

 dresses, and utensils of its inhabitants We have seen all these 

 works in manuscript, and in his own possession ; and we were asto- 

 nished that a man, single, and destitute of all assistance, could 

 have accomplished them in so short a time. This short space, 

 however, was still further occupied by general reflections of 

 much greater importance, which became the principles of his 

 other works, and which determined the progress of his ideas, and 

 the character of the rest of his life. 



Let one represent to himself a man of twenty-one years of 

 age, leaving, so to speak, the benches of the school, still in a 

 great measure a stranger to all the intricacies of our sciences 

 and systems, almost without books, and preserving only by re- 

 collection the instructions of his masters ; let him imagine this per- 

 son suddenly transported to a barbarous country, with a handful 

 of fellow-countrymen, having no other connection with him than 

 that of speaking the same language, and who either did not 

 understand, or despised, his researches ; let him view this being, 

 abandoned for several years to the most absolute solitariness, in 

 a strange land, where the meteors, the vegetables, the animals, 

 and the human beings, were different from those of ours. His 

 views would necessarily have a peculiar direction, his ideas an 

 original turn ; he would not creep along our beaten paths ; and 

 if, moreover, nature had given him an assiduous mind, and a 

 strong imagination, his conceptions would bear the impress of 

 genius. But not having to make them pass into the minds of 

 others, without adversaries to combat, or objections to refute, 

 he would not hit upon the delicate art of convincing the under- 

 standing without offending the self-love, of insensibly turning 

 the habits into new paths, and counteracting the aversion of 

 sloth by the commencement of a new labour. On the other 

 hand, being always alone with himself, and having no object of 

 comparison, taking every idea that occurred to him for a disco- 

 very, never exposed to those little struggles of society which en- 

 able a man to ascertain so soon the measure of his strength, he 



