348 Biographical Sketch of Adanson. [May, 



urged to separate his original observations, and publish them in 

 a detached form. But he positively refused to follow this 

 advice ; and hence the really valuable matter which it contained 

 has become lost to the world, and the celebrity which the 

 author was so anxious to acquire with posterity rather depends 

 upon the supposed extent of his powers than upon any thing 

 which he actually accomplished. He indeed occasionally 

 inserted papers in the Memoirs of the Academy, containing 

 accounts of some of the objects with which he had become 

 acquainted during his residence in Senegal; but these he 

 regarded as of minor importance, and seemed to regret the time 

 which was occupied in preparing them, as so much robbed from 

 his great systematic work. Upon these, however, his reputation 

 rests, and although they are of little importance compared with 

 the store of materials from which they were selected, yet they 

 are most of them valuable, and have contributed to the progress 

 of science. 



The latter part of Adanson's life was oppressed with the evils 

 attendant upon poverty, in addition to those of old age. By 

 the Revolution he lost all his property, which principally consisted 

 in a small pension from the government of France and that from 

 the Academy ; he seems to have passed some time in absolute 

 penury, and in almost complete oblivion ; when, upon the esta- 

 blishment of the Institute, he was called to become one of its 

 members, and, for a short period, enjoyed a degree of compa-' 

 rative comfort and respectability. He died at the age of 70 

 years, worn out by intense application, and, probably, from the 

 want of those comforts which were necessary to support his 

 declining years. Although so secluded in his habits, and almost 

 misanthropical in his intercourse with literary men, his disposi- 

 tion is said not to have been unamiable, and he had the merit of 

 enduring his misfortunes with exemplary fortitude. His patience 

 may, perhaps, in some measure, be attributed to apathy, and to 

 his mind being so completely absorbed in his scientific pursuits 

 as to render him insensible to those evils which, to the bulk of 

 mankind, are the most intolerable. Even the neglect with 

 which he conceived himself to be treated, probably made little 

 impression upon him ; for he seems to have imputed it more to 

 the want of discernment in his contemporaries than to his own 

 deficiencies. He left a direction in his will, which, perhaps, 

 would not have been expected from a person of his turn of mind, 

 but is highly characteristic of his countrymen, that the only 

 decoration of his tomb should be a garland of flowers, taken 

 from the 58 natural families of plants which he had endear 

 voured to establish. 



