CHARLES ALEXANDRE LESUEUR. l ^ 



ance. At length an opportunity was afforded him to gratify 

 his desire for travelling without inconvenience of a pecuniary 

 nature. Mr. William Maclure, formerly of Philadelphia, but 

 then residing in Paris, was intending to go to the United States 

 by the way of the West Indies, and offered to take Lesueur as 

 a travelling companion. The offer was gladly accepted, and 

 they left France in the autumn of 1815. A large number of 

 the West India islands were visited in the following winter, en- 

 abling Lesueur to gather a rich harvest of marine creatures, 

 and the travellers reached the United States late in the spring 

 of 1816. After a tour through New York, Connecticut, Rhode 

 Island, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Mary, 

 land, they settled down in Philadelphia. 



Lesueur found many agreeable associates in the United 

 States. His reputation had preceded him, and he was quickly 

 elected a member of the American Philosophical Society. 

 Seme months later he was elected into the Academy of Natural 

 Sciences, of which Mr. Maclure was now president, and took a 

 large part in gaining a high scientific standing for that rising 

 institution. Philadelphia was Lesueur's residence for nine 

 years. The teaching of drawing and painting was his profes- 

 sion, and the time that he could devote to science was em- 

 ployed in preparing materials for a contemplated systematic 

 work on the fishes of North America. Needing a literary 

 coadjutor for this undertaking, whom he never found, the work 

 was not written. 



When the famous socialistic colony was established by 

 Robert Owen, at New Harmony, Ind., Lesueur was one of its 

 members. He came down from Pittsburg in the famous "boat- 

 load of knowledge " with which the colony was intellectually 

 equipped. It was not his own choice, but a sense of duty to 

 gratify the wishes of his patron, Mr. Maclure that induced 

 him to leave his agreeable surroundings in Philadelphia for the 

 crude, experimental social conditions of the colony in the West. 

 During his stay at New Harmony, Lesueur made considerable 

 collections and many drawings, some of which are still pre- 

 served, and others have been published in the Journals of the 

 Academy at Philadelphia. A most spirited portrait of the old 

 Governor Vigo is still extant. An account of the drop-curtain 

 painted by Lesueur for the old theatre in New Harmony men- 

 tions that a rattlesnake and the Falls of Niagara were repre- 



