BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF THE LATE F. A. MICHAUX. 



intrusted with the inanag:emeTit of the plantation, during the journeys of his in- 

 defatigable and ever moving father. 



In the further perusal of the manuscript, I learn, at the date of the 20th of 

 September, 1789, that his son, walking along the road, was hit by a man shooting 

 at partridges, and that a grain of shot had penetrated his left eye, below the pupil. 

 From that date to December following, he occasionally speaks of the state of his 

 son, of the treatment applied to his case, and, especially, of the great despondency 

 of mind which the patient had fallen into, from the apprehension of losing his eye. 

 But here, again, we arrive at the third lost fasciculus, and I cannot ascertain the 

 final result of the accident, nor at what time, precisely, young Michaux returned 

 to France. 



His return must have taken place in the first three months of 1190, for in the 

 manuscript of the following year, on the 17th of January, the elder Michaux 

 acknowledges the receipt of a letter from his son, dated Paris, April, 1790, but 

 nothing more is said about the wounded eye. To that accident may be attributed 

 the partial deprivation of sight with which Michaux was afflicted. 



Young Michaux reached his country at the very outbreak of the French Eevo- 

 lution, in which he is said to have warmly sympathized with the republican party. 

 Such a course was not, perhaps, expected from one who had been brought up on 

 a royal domain, and was, to a certain degree, indebted to royal munificence. But 

 his exalted patriotism, his ambition to serve his country, his frank and bold temper, 

 his love of liberty imbibed in this free and happy land — all these together must 

 have raised his spirits to a high pitch ; but what must have been the vexation he 

 experienced when, on his return, he scarcely found a few remnants of the several 

 hundred thousand young trees which his father and himself had reared in their 

 American nurseries, and sent home for the particular benefit of his country. One- 

 half had been given away by the queen to her imperial father of Austria; the rest 

 had been squandered among the minions of the court, to embellish their grounds, 

 or shamefully neglected in the royal nurseries of Rambouillet. 



In the mean time the elder Michaux was continuing his explorations in North 

 America. He travelled in all directions, over more than three thousand miles, 

 during the eleven years which he spent on this side of the Atlantic. While thus 

 actively engaged, the political storm raging in his country had brought on immense 

 changes in his situation. France, ruined by royal profligacy, invaded by famine, 

 deluged with the blood of her best citizens, convulsed by civil war, and fighting 

 single-handed with the whole of Europe, could no longer afTord to pay her natu- 

 ralists abroad. Michaux was forgotten, and ceased gradually to receive his salary. 

 After having borrowed money on his own account, after having sacrificed a portion 

 of his own and of his son's fortune, he found himself under the necessity of returning 

 to his country. Unfortunately, he was shipwrecked on the coast of Holland, and, 

 after having lost the best part of his immense collections, he arrived in Paris on 

 the 26th of December, 1796, after an absence of eleven years and four months. 



On his arrival in his native land, the elder Michaux occupied his time in the 

 cultivation of the vegetable treasures which he had forwarded from the United 

 States, and in arranging his materials for the History of the North American Oahs, 

 and for his Flora Boreali Americana. In these various labors he was assisted by 

 his son, who, in the mean time, was studying medicine under the celebrated Cor- 

 visart, and attending the clinical lectures of Desault, chief surgeon of the Hotel 

 Dieu, with the view of returning to the United States and devoting himself to the 

 practice of medicine; but such was not his destiny. 



Neither the retired habits of a student, nor the easy and monotonous life of a 

 Parisian abode, suited temperaments like those of the two Michaux. Such men 



