2 Biographical Memoir of Baron de Beauvois. 



tion of being able to say that his prejudices and errors, or at 

 least those of the party which he embraced, had not contributed 

 to them. 



He was born at Arras, on the 28th October 1755, of an old 

 family, which, for two centuries, had occupied considerable of- 

 j3ces in Artois, and had given four first presidents to the 

 superior council of that province. His father, after being 

 some time a member of that court, was compelled, by the 

 decay of his fortune, to exercise the office of receiver-gene- 

 ral of the domains and woods in the territories of Picardy, Flan- 

 ders, and Artois, which had been in his family from 1685. Our 

 academician, after serving a short time in the infantry, destined 

 himself for the law, and had procured the office of advocate to 

 the king at Chatelet, when he saw himself obliged to change his 

 projects, by the death of his elder brother, which happened soon 

 after that of his father, and which left him the office of which 

 we have just spoken. 



This office, although lucrative, required but little exertion 

 for the discharge of its duties, and the young receiver-general 

 had too much activity not to desire some means of occupying 

 his leisure hours. These he found in the lectures of M. Lesti- 

 boudois, professor of natural history at Lille, a learned and re- 

 spected naturalist, who had the talent of inspiring his hearers 

 with a taste for science. He cultivated with so much care and 

 attention the dispositions of his new pupil, that they presently 

 assumed the character of a real passion. Alone, or with his 

 master, M. de Beauvois continued to collect plants and in- 

 sects. He had already in a manner exhausted his province, 

 when, in 1777, an edict of the king, elicited by M. Necker, 

 suppressed the offices of receivers-general of the domains, and 

 reducing him entirely to a private life, affiarded him an oppor- 

 tunity of seeking more abundant sources of instruction. 



He went to reside at Paris, and there assiduously attended 

 M. de Jussieu's botanical excursions. In a short time he was 

 ranked among those men in whom botany might place her hopes. 

 In 1782, the Academy named him a correspondent, and in 

 1783 and 1786, his friends brought him forward as a candidate 

 for the places which Duhamel and Guettart had left vacant. 



It was at this period, also, that he announced his peculiar 



