Biographical Memoir ofM. Claude Louis Richard. 211 



spoken about these faults, if the reparation of them be desired. 

 But all oppressed persons are not of a character to bend them- 

 selves to this maxim, and M. Richard was less so than any one. 

 After some unsuccessful attempts to obtain his due, he shut 

 himself up in his retreat, Hving and studying only for himself, 

 communicating the objects which he had collected, and the ob- 

 servations which he had made, only to a few persons, and by 

 preference to strangers. It might be said that each of his fel- 

 low countrymen whom he saw better treated than himself, ap- 

 peared to him to have usurped his rights. This much is cer- 

 tain, that the obstinate silence in which he persevered, has been 

 an immense loss to all the branches of natural history. A fo- 

 reign botanist, M. Kunth, perfectly qualified to judge, and who 

 has published a biographical notice of M. Richard, calls him one 

 of the greatest botanists of Europe. It was from his manuscripts 

 that he had formed this opinion of him. M. de Jussieu, one of 

 his old masters, and almost the only member of the Academy 

 who retained any portion of his confidence, often admired the 

 numerous analyses of flowers and fruits displayed in his draw- 

 ings. 



Zoology has not suffered less than botany from this peevish 

 humour. His labours, with respect to shells, were of the great- 

 est importance ; no collection of this kind was better laid out, 

 or more correctly named, than his. It is asserted that several 

 of his ideas on the testacea, their relations, and the principles ac- 

 cording to which they ought to be distributed, communicated in 

 conversation, passed into the works of writers who have not ac- 

 knowledged them ; but these plagiarisms did not alter his reso- 

 lution. 



Part of his collections has, since his death, been obtained 

 for the King's cabinet ; and in them were found fishes and 

 mollusca, which, if they had been made known at the time 

 when he brought them home, would have prevented several 

 mistakes made by the most able naturalists. Science not only 

 loses by such delays, it is obscured by them. In thirty years 

 works multiply ; the errors, which a word would have dis- 

 persed, arc repeated, and end with becoming so firmly rooted, 

 tliat they can only be refuted by long dissertations. 



M. Richard, however, emerged from the painful condition 



4. 



