The Life and Writings of M. Desfoniaines. 213 



into a state of solitude so much the more painful as it was contrasted 

 with six years of previous enjoyment ; but he was a father and the 

 infantine caresses of his little Mary, afforded him the sweetest of his 

 consolations. 



But he endeavored also to divert himself with the most determin- 

 ed labor : he had commenced some time before, an arrangement of 

 the herbals of the museum. He resumed this labor with renewed 

 zeal. A task so long and difficult was facilitated by an astonishing 

 memory, with respect both to forms and beings and even to names ; 

 he rarely lost the recollection of a plant, or even of a print of it, 

 which he had once seen, but it must also be acknowledged that this 

 prodigious memory was sometimes a snare, in preventing him from 

 noting his observations, and from pursuing more method in his re- 

 searches. He has often warned me of this danger, and I now trans- 

 mit it in his name to young botanists, who may, like him, be endow- 

 ed with this happy faculty. Whenever, in revising these collec- 

 tions, he met with a new genus, he published a drawing and descrip- 

 tion of it in the memoirs of the museum, and thus from 1815 to 1822 

 he enriched science with seventeen remarkable genera,* which form- 

 ed the subject of as many memoirs which have all been sanctioned 

 by the suffi-ages of botanists. He published also, about the same 

 time, various new observations on plants before known, such as the 

 genera Leucas, Amaivua, Copa'ifera, &fc. He redoubled his zeal 

 also in preparing such reports, as the Academy were pleased to 

 charge him with, from the great confidence which they had in his in- 

 telligence and impartiahty. 



This extraordinary activity, so laudable even in young men, Des- 

 fontaines preserved at the age of between seventy and eighty, an age 

 when the most laborious men seek only for repose. But his facul- 

 ties began at length to yield ; — his sight formerly so penetrating, 

 gradually became dim, and when near 80, he was threatened with 

 total blindness. He even endeavored, in this situation, to continue 

 his observations, and I shall insert in a note, an extract from a letter 

 he wrote me on the 11th of Oct. 1831, in which he mentions an ob- 

 servation on the fecundation of plants, which, although not very new 

 is nevertheless interesting. His fiiend endeavored to cheer him with 



♦ Pogostemon, Chardinia, Ricinocarpos, Gymnarhcna, Ancylanthos, Heteroden- 

 dron, Mezoneuron, Hetcrostemon, Ledocarpon, Micantkca, Diplop/iradum, Sti/lo- 

 basium, C/iamalancium, Polyphragrtion, Astcranlhos, Gyrostcmon, Condtjlocarpon. 



