ROUSSEAU AS BOTANIST 81 



this time he was a refugee from France and Geneva, and had settled 

 down at length in Motiers, one of the villages standing in the Val de 

 Travers, a valley between the gorges of the Jura and the Lake of 

 Neuchatel. Here, big with desire for "a knowledge of every 

 known plant on the globe," he began with an attempt to commit 

 to memory the whole of the Begnum vegetabile of Murray! 

 Little wonder that, clad in his Armenian costume and breathing 

 from mouth and nostrils (one almost believes) the fires of his 

 fanatical zeal for plants, this remarkable botanist — surely the 

 most remarkable in the history of the science ! — was generally 

 held by the villagers to be some evilly disposed medicine man 

 who sought for noxious herbs and who was confidently believed 

 to have poisoned a man in Motiers who died in the agonies of 

 nephritic colic. 



On several other counts also, the inhabitants did not take 

 kindly to the strange philosopher, and their dislike at length 

 reached a climax manifested by the arrival of a large stone, flung 

 by a vigorous arm through the door into his room, where, fortu- 

 nately, it fell dead at the philosopher's feet. A httle later, J. J., 

 "as timid and shy as a virgin," as he himself assures us, quitted 

 inhospitable Motiers for the Island of St. Pierre in the lake of 

 Bienne, where his life for several months was an idyll, well 

 suited to his virginal character. Most readers of Rousseau will 

 remember his delightful description of this brief sojourn in Les 

 Reveries cVun Promeneur Solitaire. 



Having sent for his Theresa, who arrived at his summons with 

 all his books and effects, the botanist recommenced his scientific 

 labours. There was ample opportunity. With the customary 

 hyperbolical turn of phrase that makes us love him, Rousseau 

 relates how, armed with the Sy sterna Naturce of Linnaeus and a 

 magnifying glass, he wandered over the island determined to 

 leave not a blade of grass unanalysed, and murmuring to himself, 

 in ecstatic repetition, the only prayer of an inarticulate old lady 

 — "Oh" — which drew from the Bishop the encomium: "Good 

 mother, continue thus to pray : your prayer is better than ours." 



Rousseau's idea was to write a monograph of all the plants on 

 the island, a purpose quickly overthrown by the receipt, presently, 

 from the Goverment of Berne of a peremptory notice to quit. 

 And so the Flora Petrinsularis was never written. 



Accepting David Hume's invitation to visit England, J. J. is 

 soon settled among the Derbyshire hills, and, at Wootton, took 

 immense delight in climbing the surrounding heights in search of 

 curious mosses, convinced at last that the discovery of a single 

 new plant was a hundred times more delightful than to have the 

 whole human race listening to his sermons for half an hour. 

 What more can science require of a man ? 



After the break with Hume, Rousseau, by this time certainly a 

 victim of persecution mania, fled back to France, and lived for 

 some time under the tutelage of the Prince de Conti at Trye, 

 near Gisors. Here he continued his botanical studies and the 

 writing of the Confessions, in a state of seraphic happiness so long 



