218 Notice of Prof. Be Cmidolle. 



plest manner, indulgence for the youth of its author, at the same 

 time admitting that every book must plead its own cause, and 

 promising to endeavor to make up in zeal for the deficiencies of 

 his experience and knowledge. There certainly could have been 

 no affectation in this modesty, for it shows itself just as clearly 

 in every future work ; and that zeal must have been no less real 

 which held out to the last years of his laborious life. 



Two years after, in April, 1800, he laid before the National In- 

 stitute, in manuscript, his Astragologia.* This was committed to 

 Lamarck and Desfontaines, at that time two of the most distin- 

 guished botanists of France, and who ever after seem to have 

 been his firm and honored friends. They reported very favora- 

 bly upon the work, observing particularly upon the extent of his 

 researches, and the exactness and precision of his descriptions. 

 From this time he began to be well known, and from this, too, 

 probably, dates his connection with Lamarck, with whom he was 

 afterwards associated in editing the Flore Frangaise. His connec- 

 tion with Lamarck and with the Flore Francaise, was of momen- 

 tous consequences to him. It was the first edition of this work, 

 as he himself declares,! which, by initiating him in his youth into 

 the elements of botany, decided his taste and his fate for life. 



It must have been about this period that he spent six years in 

 traversing all the provinces of France.J In every one he herbo- 

 rized j every where he studied the vegetation, and every where 

 made, or obtained from public or private collections, specimens 

 and documents. 



In 1804, he published in quarto his Essay upon the Medical 

 Properties of Plants. It was his inaugural thesis on taking the 

 degree of doctor in medicine in the Faculty of Paris. 



In the same year he delivered his first course of lectures on 

 physiology, the substance of which he introduced in the " Princi- 



impossible to make dried specimens. Each is accompanied by a beautiful colored 

 figure by Redoute. If it were intended, as it seems to be, to give a pretty fuli 

 history of plants of this character, a comparison of it with the account of the same 

 genera in the Prodromus, will show how immensely the species increased in num- 

 ber in the interval which elapsed until the publication of the latter work. 



" Astragologia was published in Paris in 1802, in one volume folio, by Garnery, 

 from the press of Didot. It contains descriptions of a great number of species, 

 many of them new, of Astragalus and the allied, often gum-bearing Leguminosas. 

 It is illustrated with fifty plates by Redoute. 



t Preface to the sixth volume of Flore Fran9aise, p. 10. 



X Flore Francaise, vi, preface, p. 7. 



