PERSOON. 
It is not generally known that Persoon spent the latter part of 
his life.at Paris. There are but few traces of him here, for he lived in 
poverty and local obscurity. There are a few scattering specimens 
of his determination in the herbarium of Montague,* and an article in 
Desvaux’ Journal de Botanique. These are all that remain to mark 
the local habitation of perhaps the greatest mycologist who ever lived, 
the father of the science. His bones for a short time lay in an obscure 
grave, but as the interment of the poor at Paris is only temporary, 
they have without doubt long since lost their identity in the accumula¬ 
tion of these grewsome relics in huge piles in the catecombs. It is due 
to the efforts of Fee that the final years of Persoon’s life were not 
passed in actual misery, and that we have the details of his life at Paris. 
He published a biography of Persoon in 1846 in Italian which was 
translated into French in the Bulletin de Botanique de Belgique, 1891. 
As it is to me most interesting reading, I have extracted from it very 
liberally. 
Persoon was born in 1755 at Cape Good Hope, South Africa, 
at that time a colony of Holland. His father was Dutch, his mother 
a Hottentot.f Little is known of his childhood, but having lost his 
parents at an early age he came to Germany where he lived a roving 
life in several of the university citfes and published his early works in¬ 
cluding his “Observationes Mycologicae” and his “Synopsis Methodica 
Fungorum”. The latter is the first really systematic account we have 
of fungi, and the foundation on which Fries built the superstructure. 
Persoon came to Paris, we judge, about the beginning of the century, 
for his last published work in Germany was 1801, and the first in Paris 
was 1803. His reputation had preceded him and he was at first favor¬ 
ably received, but it was not long until he found himself abandoned 
and alone in a truly miserable condition, for he was so poor that he is 
said to have suffered for the common necessities of life. His biographer 
states that the French might have pardoned him his poverty, but he 
had another defect ‘ ‘toward which the French are inexorable”. He was 
extraordinarily ugly. We do not reproduce the details of his physiog¬ 
nomy. and we believe no portrait of him exists. His contemporaries 
at Paris, however, shunned him and he lived here in almost complete 
isolation notwithstanding his reputation as an author was well known 
especially in Germany where he was justly considered the “prince of 
mycologists”. He often received consignments of plants from corre¬ 
spondents who naturally supposed him “rich and honored” living as he 
did in the wealthy city of Paris. These were usually consigned to 
some bookseller, for Persoon had not the slight funds necessary to pay 
for their transportation. Fee relates the following. “One day a 
young bookseller received a little package addressed in Latin to 
“Monsieur Persoon, Very Learned and Very Illustrious Prince of 
Mycologists, rue des Charbonnier 2”. The bookseller knew the Latin 
and while he could not understand why such an illustrious and noble 
* Two of the Gastromyeetes, I.ycoperdon perlatum and Calvatia eaelata. 
f The biographer does not state distinctly, but we presume a native, hence Persoon must 
have been of mixed blood. 
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