MEMOIR OF LOUIS-CLAUDE-MAHIE RICHARD. 423 



XVII — Memoir ofLouis-CLAUoE-MARiE Richard.* 



(rVith a Portrait, from an original drawing in the possession 



of the Editor,) 



L. C. M. Richard was born at Versailles on the 4th of Sep- 

 tember, 1754. His father, Claude Richard, the King's ffar- 

 dener at Auteuil, was a man of much information, not only 

 in what referred to his own profession, but also in the science 

 of Mathematics; and it was his office to supply, in case of 

 sickness, the place of the Professor who gave Mathematical 

 instructions to the Pages of his Majesty. The king, Louis 

 XV., who frequently saw him when he visited the gardens, 

 was struck with his shrewdness and extreme simplicity of 

 manners, and having frequently taken occasion to converse 

 with him on different subjects, he finally honoured him with 

 much of his confidence. 



Claude Richard had sixteen children, and as with all his 

 economy he could not expect to leave them any fortune, he 

 earnestly desired to give them, at least, a good education. 



Louis, the subject of our memoir, the eldest, was placed 

 at the college of Vernon, where he distinguished himself by 

 his aptness and zeal for general information, and made un- 

 commonly rapid progress, devoting his hours of recreation to 

 drawing and making plans, without any idea how valuable a 

 resource he would here find. 



The brother of the father, Claude Richard, had the super- 

 intendence of the Royal Garden at Trianon, where were 

 then collected all the rarest and most beautiful vegetable 

 productions of both hemispheres, and in which the young 

 Richard, when visiting his uncle, acquired a taste for botany: 

 whole days would he pass in examining and describing 

 plants, and in forming a little Herbarium, and when only 

 eleven years of age, this taste had grown into a passion. 



* Selected from the " Notice sur Louis-Claude-Mane Richard, Membre 

 de I' Institut, Professeur a la Faculte de Medicine de Paris, Membra de 

 la Legion d' Honneur, etc. etc., par M. Charles Kunth." 



