Biographical Memoir of M. Claude Louis Richard. 213 



the ConifertB and Cycades, the execution of which is said to be 

 still more perfect. His Memoirs on the Lygeum Spartum, on the 

 Families of the Butomeje, Calycereee, and Balanophoreae, pre- 

 sent the same kind of merit, and in the same degree *. In all 

 these are contained numerous new facts, reduced to laws with a 

 precision and regularity altogether unexpected. There is 

 everywhere seen in them the work of a man, who, before writing, 

 was thoroughly imbued with his subject by long studies, and 

 had possessed numberless opportunities of studying it. If he 

 may be blamed for any thing, it is that he did not render 

 himself sufficiently accessible to the generahty of readers, 

 and that he added too much to the difficulties with which bo- 

 tany was already crowded, from attempts to employ a rigorous 

 terminology. But, like Linnaeus, he wished that each form, 

 each shade, each relation, should be expressed by a proper and 

 unvarying term ; and the prodigious number of ideas and new 

 facts which had sprung from his observations, necessarily en- 

 gendered that multiplicity of words with which he enriched, or, 

 as some may think, overloaded the science. All his labours 

 were even directed to a common object, the formation of a new 

 Botanical Philosophy, like that of Linnaeus, which was to in- 

 clude a new botanical terminology, proportioned in extent and 

 depth to the improvements of the science, and especially to 

 those which M. Richard himself had made in it, and of which a 

 great part are still concealed in his portfolios. 



Time did not permit him to terminate this great undertaking. 

 His health, which had been long enfeebled by his travels and 



" Commentatio de Convallaria Japonica novum genus constituente, prse- 



missis nonnullis circa plantas liliaceas observationibus. (Schrader's New 



Journal of Botany, t. ii. p. 1. 1807.) 



Description of the Lygee Sparte. (Mem. de la Soc. d'Hist. Nat. de Paris, 



1799.) 

 Memoirs on the HydrocharidejE. (Mem. de I'lnst. 1811.) 

 Botanical Analysis of the Endorhizal or Monocotyledonous Embryos, and 



particularly of that of the Graminese. (Annales du Museum d'llist. Nat. 



t. xvii.) 



Proposal of a New Family of Plants, the Bulomeoe. (Mem. du Museum 



d'Hist. Nat. t. i.) 

 Annotationes de Orchideis Europaeis. (Ibid. t. iv.) 

 Memoir on the New Family of Calycereae. (Ibid. t. vi.) 

 Memoir on the New Family of Balanophorene. (Posth, Ibid. t. viii.) 



