MEMOIR OF LE yAlLLANT. 23 



discoveries than to write books, M. Le Yaillant was 

 under the necessity of employing the pen of an 

 amanuensis, M. Casimir Yaron, to revise and amend 

 the style of this second publication. Yaron was 

 himself a traveller and a poet; and it was very 

 currently believed at the time that he had performed 

 the task of editing M. Le Yaillant' s Second Journey. 

 This, however, is a mistake, and the error has been 

 satisfactorily explained. Being a foreigner by birth, 

 and having spent the years of his boyhood among 

 the forests of Guiana, Mons. Le Yaillant never had 

 a very pure or classical acquaintance with the French 

 tongue. The early age at which he visited Africa, 

 and his long separation from all European inter- 

 course, tended still more to obliterate his recollec- 

 tions of the language, which in fact he had nearly 

 altogether forgotten. And although he afterwards 

 recovered his knowledge of it, so far as to speak it 

 with facility, vet it was hardly to be expected from 

 one in his circumstances tha* ne could write it with 

 elegance or correctness. It was to remedy these 

 defects alone that he engaged the pen of a stranger 

 to revise his manuscripts, and take charge of them 

 while passing through the press. There is nothing 

 in this substitution of the preliminary aid <rf a 

 friend that can be deemed discreditable to the me- 

 mory of either party /wi<i it was to this extent and 

 no more that the services of M. Yaron were ren- 

 dered. The incorrectness of style here adverted to 

 is perceptible in the other works on Natural History 



