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TOURNEFORT, JOSEPH PITTON DE. 



TOUIINEFORT, JOSEPH PITTON DE. 



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ond of his life he spoiled many of his works by painting out the 

 beautiful accessories which he had originally introduced, upon tho 

 principle that in portrait everything should be sacrificed to tho head 

 the portrait of llestout was one that suffered in this way ; he turned 

 his brilliant silk vest into one of simple brown stuff. He died in 

 1788, aged eighty-four. He gave 10,000 francs to tho Academy of 

 Paris to found an annual prize of 500 francs for the best picture in 

 perspective, aerial and linear alternately ; he gave also an equal siirn 

 for the foundation of an annual prize for the most useful discovery for 

 the arts, to be awarded by the Academy of Amiens ; and he founded a 

 gratuitous school of design in hia native place, St. Quentin. 



TOURNEFORT, JOSEPH PITTON DE, a celebrated botanist, was 

 born June 5, 1656, of a noble family at Aix, in Provence, in the 

 present department of Bouches du Rh6ne. Having a great taste for 

 observation, the study of nature soon disgusted him with scholastic 

 philosophy and theology, in which ho was engaged, in order to please 

 his relation?, who wiahed him to enter holy orders. The death of his 

 father, in 1677, enabled him to follow his own inclination ; and having 

 exhausted the fields of his own coimtry and the garden of an 

 apothecary, he went to the Alp?, in order more fully to satisfy his 

 curiosity. At Montpellier, whither he had gone to study medicine, 

 and where he was received by Magnol, and became the friend of 

 Chirac, he found fresh stores of information ; and he collected still 

 richer from the Cdvennes, the Pyrenees, and from Catalonia, to which 

 places his zeal carried him. In these excursions he was twice robbed 

 by the Spanish miquelets (or foot soldiers), who left him nothing but 

 his plants ; he was buried also for two hours under the ruins of a hut 

 where he was passing the night; and thus he seemed to be inuring 

 himself to the fatigues he was one day to undergo in longer travels. 

 He was already possessed of rich collections and numerous observa- 

 tions, when he repaired to Paris, where Fagon, chief physician to the 

 queen, and curator of the Jardin du Roi, was the sole patron of 

 botanical studies. Fagon knew how to appreciate both knowledge and 

 merit; his character, as well as his rank, placed him above jealousy ; 

 and Tournefort found in him a disinterested protector. In 1683 he 

 was appointed assistant professor with Fagou at the Jardin du Roi, 

 whose numerous other occupations allowed him but little time for 

 teaching. The way in which Tournefort fulfilled this office soon 

 made him known, and attracted from all parts a crowd of students to 

 his lectures and herborising excursions. In 1688 he was commissioned 

 to travel through Spain and Portugal, and shortly after through 

 Holland and England, in order to enrich the Jardin du Roi with the 

 plants of these countries. These travels made him acquainted with 

 the most distinguished scientific men of the countries he visited, and 

 gained him their friendship and esteem. Being made, in 1692, a 

 member of the Academic des Sciences, he proved by his ' Elemens de 

 Botanique,' which was published shortly afterwards, how well he 

 deserved that honour. The title of Doctor of Medicine was conferred 

 upon him by the Faculty of Paris iu 1698. He again left France in 

 1700, being sent by the king to the East to collect plants and make 

 observations of all kinds. In company with the German botanist 

 Guudelsheirner, and the celebrated artist Aubriet, he spent two years in 

 travelling through the islands of Greece, the borders of the Black Sea, 

 Georgia and the environs of Mount Caucasus, Asia Minor, and Arme- 

 nia. He was preparing to go to Egypt, when, hearing that the plague 

 was ravaging that country, and that his patron Fagon was dangerously 

 ill, he hastened back to his own country, to which he was called both 

 by gratitude and friendship. Having resumed his duties at the 

 Jardin du Roi, and being also appointed professor to the Faculty, he 

 spent the little spare time he had in arranging his numerous collections 

 and in drawing up different works, especially the account of his 

 travels in the Levant. The fatigues of work and his travels had much 

 weakened his originally robust constitution, and a violent blow which 

 he received on the breast from the axletree of a carriage tended still 

 more to impair it ; so that after lingering some mouths, he ended his 

 laborious life the 28th day of November 1708. By his will he left 

 to the king the valuable zoological museum which he had formed, and 

 his library to the Abbd Bignon. 



A judicious and lively mind, and a natural gaiety of disposition, 

 rendered Tournefort equally fitted to succeed in scientific investiga- 

 tions and to form the charm of his friends in society. His attach- 

 ment to his own country made him refuse the solicitations of Paul 

 Hermann, who wished to have him for his successor, and offered him, 

 in the name of the states of Holland, the situation of professor of 

 botany at Leyden, with a salary of 4000 francs (160Z.) 



The system of Tournefort was an advance on those of Cesalpino, 

 Morisou, Hermann, Ray, and Rivinus, but has since been displaced by 

 those of Jussieu, De Candolle, and others. Authors had previously 

 only employed themselves in grouping plants into classes ; the much 

 more important determination of the genera was still almost entirely 

 wanting. It is this subdivision of the subject which Tournefort 

 executed with such admirable acuteness, and which distinguishes his 

 labours from all that had preceded him; and it is this, joined to a 

 classification simple, easy, and almost always natural, which caused 

 his method to be afterwards adopted by the botanists of all countries. 



Tournefort adopted the principle that genera should be constructed 

 on characters derived from both the fructification and organs of 

 vegetation. In seeking for order he had the good sense not to. pretend 



to an absolute regularity, which nature nowhere presents ; and felt 

 (which has been too often forgotten in our day, and which has intro- 

 duced into natural history so many useless genera, and so many 

 parasitical denominations) that the generic characters must admit of 

 exceptions which are commanded by nature itself. Linnaeus, when 

 again reforming the science, adopted the greater part of the genera of 

 Tournefort ; but having constructed his genera on characters derived 

 from the fructification alone, he was obliged to reject many of Tournc- 

 fort's genera. The plates which Tournefort has given characteristic of 

 the genera are, even to the present day, for the most part, among the 

 best means of understanding them : they are well executed, and upon 

 a plan at that time quite new, and are a proof of his taste, as well as 

 of his spirit of order and observation. 



Although he did not think that the consideration of the natural 

 relations of plants (of which the first glimpses were to be met with in 

 the works of Lobel and Magnol) could serve as the basis of an easy 

 classification, still he generally observes the most marked of these 

 relations, and the greater part of his classes form one or more large 

 families. The separation of the woody from tho herbaceous plants, 

 which nature frequently offers together in the same genus, and which 

 was admitted by the botanists of Tournefort's time, is in his system a 

 defect which an increased knowledge of the structure and functions of 

 plants has long since caused botanists entirely to abandon in their 

 systems of classification, however much advantage may be derived 

 from it for practical purposes. 



Tournefort did not do for the species what he had so well accom- 

 plished for the genera; as he left confounded with them simple 

 varieties, even those which are evidently only the result of cultivation. 

 Neither did he think of giving them names more convenient than 

 those which were then in use, and which were commonly vague, and 

 often very long and complicated. These inconveniences Linnajus got 

 rid of; and at the same time he arranged the vegetable kingdom 

 according to his celebrated sexual system, in which plants were placed 

 in classes and orders according to the number of their stamens and 

 pistils. But the system of Tournefort was never abandoned in France, 

 and the study of its principles resulted in the labours of Adanson, 

 Jussieu, and De Candolle, to whom we are so greatly indebted for the 

 present position of systematic botany. 



The ' Institutiones Rei Herbarise" is distinguished for its clearness 

 and precision, and for a number of very just observations. The 

 historical part of this work, which is the most considerable, displays 

 much solid learning, which has been of great use to those who have 

 since his time written on the history of botanical science. The dif- 

 ferent travels of Tourneforb enriched botany with a great number of 

 species, and even of genera. He brought back from his travels in 

 the East, more than thirteen hundred plants, the greater part of 

 which were in the Herbarium of Gundelsheimer, his companion ; and 

 have been since examined by Willdenow, who has mentioned them in 

 his ' Species Plantarum.' If the history of the plants in the environs of 

 Paris, by Tournefort, divided into six herborisations, is of little 

 importance as to the number of species described (which ia only four 

 hundred and twenty-seven), still it ia a very valuable work in other 

 respects. By the exactness of the synouymes, and by the skill with 

 which the plants are referred to the nomenclature and to the plates of 

 the ancient botanists, whose errors Tournefort correct?, this work 

 furnishes an excellent model of criticism. There is also to be found 

 in it a faithful description of some rare plants, which are omitted in 

 his other works. Haller however rather over-estimates its value, 

 when he is inclined to regard it as tho chief of Tournefort's writings 

 ('prsccipium forte" Tournefortii opus'). One may judge of Tourne- 

 fort's reputation, and of the value that was put upon whatever he 

 wrote, from the fact of his lectures on Materia Medica having been 

 collected by his pupils, and translated and published in English 

 before they appeared in French, which was not till some years after 

 his death. The account of Tournefort's travels was for a long time the 

 source of our most accurate information about the countries which he 

 visited. The simplicity of the style does not lessen the interest of the 

 narrative. To the observation of nature he joins everywhere that of 

 men, manners, and customs, and shows an extensive knowledge both 

 of history and antiquity. 



Among the manuscripts left by Tournefort was a botanical topo- 

 graphy of all the places which he had visited, and a large collection of 

 critical and other observations, which has never been published, 

 though it was entrusted to Reue'aulrne to arrange for that purpos?. 

 The genus of American shrubs, to which Plumier, out of honour to his 

 master's memory, gave the name of ' Tournefortia/ derives its chief 

 interest from this celebrated name. 



The following is a list of Tournefort's principal works : ' Elemens 

 de Botanique, ou Methode pour connaitre les Plantes,' 3 vols. 8vo, 

 with 451 plates, Paris, 1694. Some imperfections in this work were 

 pointed out by Ray, to whom Tournefort replied in a Latin work, 

 entitled 'De Optima Methodo Instituendd in Re Herbaria ad Sapientem 

 Virum G. Sherardum Epistola, in qufl respondetur Dissertation! D. 

 Rail de variis Plantarum Methodis,' 8vo, Paris, 1697. In 1700 he 

 published a Latin version of his ' Elements of Botany,' with ^ruany 

 additions, and a learned preface, containing the history of the science ; 

 it was entitled ' Institutiones Rei Herbaria), ed. altera, Gallicft longd 

 auctior,' 3 vols. 4 to, with 476 plates, Paris. After hia expedition to 



