The Life of Jean Henri Fabre 



lector. Very few would have felt capable of com- 

 peting with him when it came to giving the name 

 or the geographical distribution of a plant. A 

 blade of grass, a pad of moss, a scab of lichen, 

 a thread of seaweed: he knew them all. The 

 scientific name flashed across his mind at once. 

 What an unerring memory, what a genius for clas- 

 sification amid the enormous mass of things ob- 

 served! I stood aghast at it. I owe much to 

 Requien in the domain of botany. Had death 

 spared him longer, I should doubtless have owed 

 more to him, for his was a generous heart, ever 

 open to the woes of novices. 



In the following year I met Moquin-Tandon,^ 

 with whom, thanks to Requien, I had already ex- 

 changed a few letters on botany. The illustrious 

 Toulouse professor came to study on the spot the 

 flora which he proposed to describe systematically. 

 When he arrived, all the hotel bedrooms were re- 

 served for the members of the General Council 

 which had been summoned ; and I offered him board 

 and lodging: a shake-down in a room overlooking 

 the sea; fare consisting of lampreys, turbot, and 

 sea-urchins; common enough dishes in that land of 

 Cockayne, but possessing no small attraction for 

 the naturalist, because of their novelty. My cor- 

 dial proposal tempted him ; he yielded to my bland- 



^1 Horace Benedict Alfred Moquin-Tandon (1804-63), a 

 distinguished naturalist, for twenty years director of the 

 botanical gardens at Toulouse. He was commissioned 

 by the French Government in 1850 to compile a flora 

 of Corsica, and is the author of several important works 

 on botany and zoology. — A. T. de M. 

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