102 BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 



His conchological work was far above the average of its day, 

 and fully abreast of the knowledge of the time. 



His monument,* erected in 1846 by Alexander, brother of 



William Maclure, in the garden of the Maclure mansion at New 



Harmony, bears the following appropriate lines : 



Votary of Nature, even from a child, 



He sought her presence in the trackless wild. 



To him the shell, the insect, and the flower 



Were bright and cherished emblems of her power; 



In her he saw a spirit all divine, 



And worshipped like a pilgrim at her shrine. 



Charles Alexander Lesueur. 



Second, in point of time, among those who published in 

 America on American and other mollusks, is Charles Alexander 

 Lesueur, t born at Havre-de-Grace, France, Jan. i, 1778. 



He grew up with a love for natural history so great that in 

 order to accompany the scientific expedition of the " Geographe " 

 under Baudin in the year 1800 he enlisted as a landsman among 

 the crew. Another enthusiast who had, as it were, forced him- 

 self upon the expedition was Fran9ois Peron, who discovered the 

 unusual talents of Lesueur as an artist and succeeded in getting 

 him transferred to the position of zoological draughtsman, where 

 those talents could be put to their proper use. Henceforth the 

 two young men were inseparable friends. The commander of 

 the expedition turned out to be most unfit for his position. Be- 

 sides exhibiting great inhumanity to his subordinates, it is alleged 

 that he was no better than a thief and appropriated to his own 

 emolument the stores of the expedition. He died at last, with 

 many of the others, and finally of the scientific staff only Peron 

 and Lesueur returned to France in 1804. Six years later Peron 



♦Recently described by Mr. E. A. Schwarz in Proc. Ent. Soc, Wash., 

 vol. i, No. 2. 



t See Memoir, by George Ord, in Silliman's Journal, second series, vol. 

 viii, p. 189, 1849. 



