4 Biographical Memoij- of Michel Adanson, 



age of nineteen, he had already methodically described more 

 than 4000 species of the three kingdoms. The mere manual 

 operations which an undertaking like this would require, prove 

 that he employed a part of his nights in it. This, no doubt, con- 

 tributed much to his own improvement, but it did nothing for the 

 advancement of science : most of these productions were already 

 known and described in books. A climate but little frequented 

 could alone furnish him abundantly with such as had never been 

 seen or examined by naturalists. 



M. Adanson, urged by the ambition of placing himself, 

 cost what it might, among those who have extended the limits 

 of natural history, and, like most young students, only knowing 

 for this purpose the easy way of multiplying descriptions of 

 species, determined to travel. He resigned his benefice, and ha- 

 ving obtained, by dint of importunities, and through the credit 

 of MM. de Jussieu, a small post in the counting-houses of the 

 African Company, he set out for Senegal on the 20th Decem- 

 ber 1748. 



The motives which determined his choice are curious. " It 

 was,'' he says in a note that was found among his papers, " be- 

 cause this country was of all the European settlements the most 

 difficult to penetrate, the hottest, the most unhealthy^ the most 

 dangerous in all other respects, and consequently the least known 

 by naturalists.'' The man who could be determined precisely 

 by such reasons as these, would require to have no small degree 

 of zeal. On the other hand, he would be less sensible than any 

 other person to the difference between Paris and a desart. Con- 

 stantly labouring eighteen hours in the day, he never reflected 

 whether he was near or far from the enjoyments of the world. 

 He appears, besides, to have always had a very strong constitu- 

 tion. In his narrative, we see him, sometimes traversing sands 

 heated to 60° of Reaumur, which converted his shoes into horn, 

 and, by reflecting the light, made the skin of his face peel off"; at 

 other times overwhelmed by those terrible hurricanes which oc- 

 cur in the torrid zone, without his activity being ever for one mo- 

 ment diminished. 



During the five years which he passed in this country, he de- 

 scribed a prodigious number of new plants and animals, — drew 

 a chart of the river, and subjected it to astronomical observa- 



