TOURNEFORT. 47 



gown, said good-bye to the seminary and its priests, 

 and devoted himself forthwith and as long as life 

 lasted to the science of natural history, and especially 

 to botany. 



He did not rest satisfied with the books of Plinius 

 and Aristoteles, or of the feeble botanists of his 

 youth, but he intended to study plants as they 

 grew, to discover their uses, and to endeavour to 

 classify and name them. Besides, he got a love 

 for the healing art, for one of his first teachers 

 was a chemist of Aix, who gave him lessons about 

 the common simple plants which were used in 

 medicine. So, after roaming over the country far 

 and wide, month after month, and collecting plants 

 in Provence, on the mountains of Dauphind and 

 Savoy, he went to Montpellier in 1679 to study 

 anatomy and medicine. The young student was 

 there for two years, and then he seems to have set 

 the example to his fellow-students, for botanical 

 excursions became a favourite method of passing 

 away time. In 168 1, in company with several 

 fellow-students, he went to . the Pyrenees, and wan- 

 dered about those difficult mountains, submitting 

 to much fatigue, cold, and hunger. Very robust 

 in health, and vigorous, his fatigues and hard fare 

 seemed to do him good, and at last he obtained a 

 very fine collection of the plants of that region. It 

 is always told that the ardent young botanist and 

 his friends got into trouble, being taken prisoners 

 more than once by Miguelites (smugglers) ; but it is 

 not likely that those people got much out of them. 



