Biographical Memoir of Michel Adanson. 3 



He possessed much vivacity of disposition, an imperturbable 

 memory, and an ardent desire to distinguish himself; and no^ 

 thing more was wanting to ensure his success at college, and 

 make him appear to advantage at public exhibitions. The 

 celebrated English author, Tuberville Needham, then re- 

 nowned for the numerous and singular facts which his micro- 

 scopes enabled him to discover, assisted one day at the public 

 exercises of Plessis. Struck with the brilliant manner in which 

 young Adanson executed them, he asked permission to add a 

 microscope to the books which the scholar was to receive as a 

 prize ; and in delivering it to him, said, with an air of solemnity, 

 " You, who are so skilled in the works of man, are worthy also 

 of knowing the works of nature " 



These words decided the profession of the child. They re- 

 mained deeply engraven in the memory of M. Adanson, and he 

 even repeated them with interest toward the close of his hfe. 

 From this moment, his curiosity no longer changed its object. 

 Having his eye attached, so to speak, to that astonishing instru- 

 ment, he submitted to it all that the narrow limits of his college 

 supplied him with, — all that he could collect in his walks, by steal- 

 ing away from the paths prescribed to his companions, the small- 

 est parts of mosses, and the minutest insects. He knew those 

 productions which nature seems to have reserved for the curious 

 eye of the philosopher, before those which she abandons to ge- 

 neral inspection ; and his mind was already filled with those 

 wonders of detail, while his soul had not as yet experienced the 

 impression of the grand spectacle of the universe. Perhaps he 

 never even felt those emotions at once so gentle and animating. 

 He had no youth ; labour and meditation seized him from his 

 childhood ; and during nearly seventy years, all his days, all his 

 moments, were occupied with the laborious researches of a pro- 

 fessed man of science. 



On leaving college, he was admitted into the cabinets of 

 Reaumur and Bernard de Jussieu, where a rich harvest opened 

 itself to his activity. He devoured it with a sort of fury. He 

 passed whole days at the Jardin des Plantes. ^Not content with 

 hearing the professors, he repeated their lessons to the other 

 scholars; and he has been heard to observe, in a jocular way, 

 of the present professors, that they were his pupils of the third 

 generation. We have evidence from his manuscripts, that, at the 



