CHARLES ALEXANDRE LESUEUR. 



137 



French scientific serials and deal with jellyfishes and some 

 other marine animals. Lesueur was joint author with Anselme 

 G. Desmarest of two papers on certain molluscs and sea 

 mosses in 1814 and 1815. The papers of which he was sole 

 author number forty-three. They begin in 1813 with a memoir 

 on several new species of mollusks and radiates, published in 

 the Journal de Physique. The first six were written before he 

 came to America, and he picked up material for the seventh 

 on his way over. It deals with three new sluglike molluscs, 

 and is entitled Characters of a New Genus (Firoloida) and De- 

 scriptions of Three New Species upon which it is Formed ; 

 Discovered in the Atlantic Ocean, in the Months of March and 

 April, 1816, lat. 22 9'. It appeared in Volume I of the Journal 

 of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, in 1817. 

 Dr. Ruschenberger relates, in his Notice of the Academy, that 

 in the first year of the Journal, " Mr. Ord, anxious to forward 

 the publication, translated or rather prepared the papers of M. 

 Lesueur from materials furnished by him, as that gentleman, 

 who immigrated from France in 1816, possessed very little 

 knowledge of the English language." The last three of the 

 list appeared in Paris in 1827, 1831, and 1839 respectively. 

 Two are on certain tortoises, the other is an observation on a 

 bite of a viper. Three other papers, written while he was in 

 this country, were published in Paris ; the rest appeared in the 

 Journal of the Philadelphia Academy, except one in the Trans- 

 actions of the American Philosophical Society. He evidently 

 restricted himself quite closely to the fishes and other aquatic 

 animals, though with an occasional excursion among the rep- 

 tiles. Peron and Lesueur had intended to publish an elabo- 

 rate work on the Medusa, after the history of the Voyage to 

 Terra Australis was completed. The death of the former 

 checked the project, but Lesueur issued a prospectus of the 

 work, with specimen plates engraved and coloured after his 

 beautiful drawings. It is probable that the necessarily great 

 cost of such a publication prevented the plan from being car- 

 ried out. 



His descriptions are clear, exact, and honest. His drawings 

 are not accurate only, but spirited. They are works of art 

 rather than mechanical representations. With less range of 

 learning than Rafinesque and some other contemporaries, Le- 

 sueur had, what Rafinesque had not, sound sense and faithful- 

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