THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 131 



was sent to the distant shores of Cochin-China. This was 

 long before the days of the French occupation, and the coun- 

 try was wild and savage, with a very unhealthful climate. 

 Loureiro, who seems to have possessed all the adroitness and 

 persuasiveness of his order, managed to place himself under 

 the protection of the governing chiefs, who were interested in 

 him because of his knowledge of medicine. He w^as named 

 as a sort of director of physical and mathematical studies, and 

 while not openly allowed to preach the Gospel, his efforts in 

 that direction were connived at because of his usefulness as a 

 physician. 



Up to this time he had no knowledge of botany, but 

 in the course of his medical practice, since he could not obtain 

 European remedies, he found himself forced to have recourse 

 to the native herbs that possessed healing virtues. This made 

 it necessary to study plants, and he took up botany just as it 

 was first taken up in civilized Europe, as an intensely prac- 

 tical study with a direct bearing on the needs of daily life. 

 The task before him was most difficult ; he was without train- 

 ing in botany, he was wholly isolated from the scientific world, 

 and worst of all, he had no books. But he seems to have been 

 endowed with infinite patience and persistence, and never to 

 have wavered in his determination. He managed gradually 

 to acquire a few books, and finally came into possession of the 

 works of Linnaeus, who was only eight years older than Lou- 

 reiro, and had begun his wonderful scientific career with the 

 publication of his Sy sterna Naturae in 1735, the same year in 

 which Loureiro had left Portugal for the East. With the 

 aid of these books, joined to an unusual keenness of observa- 

 tion and an indefatigable industry, he succeeded in the course 

 of his thirty-six years' residence in Cochin-China in making 

 himself familiar with a very large number of plants, many of 

 which were entirely new. He collected assiduously not only 

 in Cochin-China, but also in China proper, as for several years 

 he resided in Canton and Macao. Many of his specimens he 



