B E A 



120 



B E A 



Noyon, both in the same government ; and on the west, the 

 Vpxm Nurniaml. in Norniandic. (Maps in the Atlas of the 

 Encyclopedia Mittiodiqur.) 



The BeauvaiMi ii watered by the Oise, which bou: 

 on the south-east ; by the Epte, which bounds it on the 

 west; by the Tin -rain, and some other streams of Im- 

 portance. The air is rather cold, but healthy ; the surface 

 unequal, made up of plains and lulls, fertile* in corn, but 

 producing little wine. There is no want of wood, and the 

 pasturage is abundant. A considerable number of .-hi ep 

 are fed, and the butter and cheese made here are in great 

 request. There is plenty of game, poultry, and fish. Flax 

 and hemp are grown in great quantity. We have .seen [see 

 BEAVVAIS] that the linen manufacture is one important 

 branch of industry at Beauvais. There are some mineral 

 springs. The principal places in Beauvoisis arc, Beauvui-, 

 the capital (population in 1832, 12,867), and Clerinont 

 (population in Ib32, 2715 for the commune, 259-1 for the 

 town itself), on a small feeder of the Oise, east by south of 

 Beauvais. 



BEAUVOIS, AMBROSE MARIA FRANCIS JO- 

 11 PAL1SOT DE, a celebrated French naturalist and 

 traveller, was born at Arras on the 27th of July, 1752. His 

 fiilhcr, who was an advocate, educated him for the legal pro- 

 fession, but his bios for the study of natural history was so 

 strong that from an early age he was more frequently in the 

 fields with his friend and preceptor Lestiboudois than in tho 

 e.mrts of law. In the year 1772 he was appointed receiver- 

 general of crown rents, which he held fur about five .years. 

 Upon the suppression of this office in 1 777, he appears to 

 l..ive abandoned his profession, and to have determined 

 upon devoting himself exclusively to his favourite pursuits. 

 The French government had planned an expedition to 

 the west coast of Africa, for the purpose of founding a set- 

 tlement which might serve as a counterpoise to the mer- 

 cantile influence of the English in that part of the world. 

 Palisot de Beauvois eagerly embraced what appeared a fa- 

 vourable means of exploring a country rich in every branch 

 of natural history, and never before trod by the foot of an 

 European naturalist : without regarding the extreme in- 

 salubrity of a climate from which scarcely more than one 

 European in four ever returns, he obtained permission to ac- 

 company the expedition at his own charge. On the 17th 

 July, 1786, he sailed from Rochefort for Benin, in which, 

 mid the neighbouring kingdom ofOware, lie spent about 

 fifteen months, investigating its natural productions with 

 a zeal that even the dreadful fevers of the country, with 

 which he was attacked, were insufficient to destroy. While 

 here, he planned a journey across Africa to Abyssinia; but 

 after having penetrated the interior for a considerable dis- 

 tance, he was compelled to return in consequence of the 

 timidity (prudence?) of his companions, who were fright- 

 ened at the dangers of the route, and at the multiply ing 

 difficulties by which they found themselves opposed at 

 every step. On his return to the coast, he was attacked 

 so severely by scurvy and yellow fever, that, to use his own 

 \vords, ufter seeing more than live-sixths of his companions 

 perish, and having been himself .several times in the very 

 j.r.vs of death, it became indispensable for him to abandon 

 the country, leaving behind him the principal part of hi- col- 

 Ic-ctinn, which consisted of skins of animals, insects, dried 

 plants, and minerals, to be forwarded to France. Fortunately 

 a part of these had previously been sent to M . de Jussieu, and 

 a part was put on board the ship in which he embarked lor 

 St. Domingo, otherwise the whole fruit of so much zeal and 

 i.;ifl''.Tiiig would have perished ; for what he left behind him 

 was soon after burned, along with the settlement, by an 

 English expedition. Upon his arrival at Cape Franc 

 St. 1 ) imingo, in 1788, his health became speedily re-esta- 

 blished. Here having an opportunity of witnessing tin? prac- 

 tical working of the slave system, he formed an opinion so 

 decidedly adverse to emancipation, that to his latest hour he 

 continued to oppose the granting of freedom to the negroes, 

 cvept under very strict conditions, and after the lap-e of 

 a considerable number of years, during which they might 

 be gradually prepared to make a proper use of their lib. m . 

 He seems to have been always extremely tender of the 

 interests of the colonists, from whom indeed he had re- 

 ceived the greatest kindness during his residence in tho 

 island. When it was found impossible any longer to keep 

 the blacks in subjection, M. de Beauvois was deputed by the 

 I'Vin-h authorities of St. Domingo to proceed to the United 

 biates, in the hops of obtaining assistance from the Ameri- 



can government. Upon his return from this fruitless mission 

 1, he found the island in confusion; In- collections, 

 which had becoir. : -timed in the confla- 



gration of Cape Francois; und the negroes, now become 

 the masters, who naturally saw nothing in him but a per- 

 .-ecutor, threw him into pri 



While lying in prison, in daily . iken 



out for execution, he was enabled t . :hc faithfulness 



of a mulatto woman, to whom, some tin. -departure 



for the United States, he had humanely granted her 

 dom : she not only effected his liberation. Dot procured him 

 the means of reaching the United State-. Th 

 life preserved by the devotion of one of that MTV race which 

 he thought worthy of little short of eternal beiiduge. On his 

 arrival at Philadelphia, penniless and friciidlc-s he learned 

 that his name had been in-crtcd in the list-, ol 

 tions, and that it was no longer safe to return to France. 

 One of the great fruits in De He.unois' character vv.t 

 unconquerable perseverance, and an cla.-liciiy of 

 which no misfortunes could destroy. Ui:di-niayi"l at his 

 apparently hopeless condition, he bethought him of accom- 

 plishments which in his happier days had made him l!.>' 

 delight of his friends, but which he had . 

 might be the only resource for procuring a mor.-el of bread. 

 By the teaching of music and languages he supported him- 

 self honourably ; and soon succeeded in attracting the no- 

 tice of the few persons who at that time, in Noiti. 

 occupied them.-elves with natural history. 



l"p on the arrival in the United States of the French 

 Minister Adet, De Beauvois no longer found himself strait- 

 ened for means. He forthwith abandoned his occupations, and 

 determined upon exploring the more remote parts of North 

 America. He accordingly examined the Appalachian Moun- 

 tains, and penetrated into the country of the Creek and Chero- 

 kee Indians, still collecting objects of natural history in all its 

 branches. Among other things he discovered the jaws and 

 molar teeth of the great mastodon on the banks of the Ohio, 

 and he brought the tooth of a megulonyx from the u . 

 Virginia. Upon his return to Philadelphia loaded with :ir- 

 quisitions, he learned that his proscription had 1 

 and that, by singular good fortune, his patrimony had not 

 been sold. He immediately repaired to France, where he 

 found his affairs in lamentable disorder, and his wife un- 

 faithful. He divorced his wife, sold a parlion of his pro- 

 perty in order to free the remainder from inn 

 renounced the perils of travelling, and thenceforward de 

 him elf to the examination and publication of his eollci : 

 But of these he found only a miserable wreck. The V.. 

 in Benin, and the negroes at Cape Francoix, had de- 1 

 everything ; he had only what he brought with him IV. in 

 Philadelphia, and the small collections \viiieh l.e hud for- 

 warded while in Africa to M. de Jussieu. These. 

 sullicud to occupy him, in conjunction with genera! ' 



of natural history, for the remainder of his hfc. In 

 1806 he was called to the Institute as the successor of 

 Adanson ; in 1815 he was created titular councillor i 

 University of Paris by Napoleon, upon hit, return from I'.lba ; 

 and in January, Is^O, he died from an attack of diarrlm-a. 



After his return to France, Palisot de Heauvois wu.s the 

 author of a considerable number of work-, -omc of . 

 were inserted in the transaction* of le.inu <i 

 in the Encyclopcdie Mi't/imlique, and the remainder 

 published separately. All these, except his .l\thi'ni>unii<; 

 may be supposed to have contributed more or less to the 

 progress of science ; but the works on which his reputation 

 chielly depend are his 1'lore. d Oicare ;;nd il,' H-ttiii, pub- 

 lished in twenty parts, in folio, between IbO-l and Is-Jl ; hij 

 //JA-V/V of the same country, of which fifteen parts in folio 

 appeared between Isdl.j and lh'21 : and his Agrostogru, 

 which appeared in one volume 8vo. in 1812. In the , 

 nf Ow are are several extremely curious plants, especially one 

 called after the author Hrlvi.*in : and the work abounds in 

 good observations, showing De ]'. nave been well 



versed in some of the more diliicult pans of botany. It 

 i- scarcely iiiir in un English biographer to say that the 

 book is extremely inea'jre in species, considering that the 

 bulk of what lie had collected for it was di -trou'd I- 

 own countrymen, in their zeal for crippling the i. 

 France by tin: destruction of the properly of peaceable French 

 subjects: or to complain that it affords no general view uf 

 the vegetation of this still unknown and most interesting 

 country ; fur the work itself was not completed when thu 

 author died. Whatever defects may bo found in the Hunt 



