August 3.
Chronology.
Michael Adanson, an eminent naturalist of Scottish extraction, born in April, 1727, at Aix, in Provence, died at Paris on the third of August, 1806. Needham, at one of his examinations, presented Adanson, then a child, with a microscope, and the use of the instrument gave the boy a bias to the science which he distinguished as a philosopher. His parents destined him for the church, and obtained a prebend’s stall for him, but he abandoned his seat, made a voyage to Senegal in 1757, and published the result of his labours in a natural history of that country. This obtained him the honour of corresponding member in the Academy of Sciences. In 1763, his “Famille des Plantes” appeared; it was followed by a design of an immense general work, which failed from Louis XV., withholding his patronage. He formed the project of a settlement on the African coast for raising colonial produce without negro slavery, which the French East India company refused to encourage: he refused to communicate his plan to the English, who, after they had become martyrs of Senegal, applied for it to Adanson, through lord North. He declined invitations from the courts of Spain and Russia, and managed as well as he could with pensions derived from his office of royal censor, his place in the academy, and other sources inadequate to the expense of forming his immense collections. He was reduced to poverty by the revolution. The French invited him to join it as a member; he answered, “he had no shoes.” This procured him a small pension, whereon he subsisted till his death.[286]
So early as thirteen years of age, Adanson began to write notes on the natural histories of Aristotle and Pliny; but soon quitted books to study nature. He made a collection of thirty-three thousand existences, which he arranged in a series of his own. This was the assiduous labour of eight years. Five years spent at Senegal, gave him the opportunity of augmenting his catalogue. He extended his researches to subjects of commercial utility, explored the most fertile and best situated districts of the country, formed a map of it, followed the course of the Niger, and brought home with him an immense collection of observations, philosophical, political, moral, and economical, with an addition to his catalogue of about thirty thousand hitherto unknown species, which, with his former list, and subsequent additions brought the whole number to more than ninety thousand.
The arrangement of Adanson’s “Families des Plantes,” is founded upon the principle, “that if there is in nature a system which we can detect, it can only be founded on the totality of the relations of characters, derived from all the parts and qualities of plants.” His labours are too manifold to be specified, but their magnitude may be conceived from his having laid before the academy, in 1773, the plan of his “Universal Natural Encyclopædia,” consisting of one hundred and twenty manuscript volumes, illustrated by seventy-five thousand figures, in folio. In 1776, he published in the “Supplement of the first Encyclopædia,” by Diderot and D’Alembert, the articles relative to natural history and the philosophy of the sciences, comprised under the letters A. B. C. In 1779, he journied over the highest mountains in Europe, whence he brought more than twenty thousand specimens of different minerals, and charts of more than twelve hundred leagues of country. He was the possessor of the most copious cabinet in the world.
Adanson’s first misfortune from the revolution was the devastation of his experimental garden, in which he had cultivated one hundred and thirty kinds of mulberry to perfection; and thus the labour of the best part of his life was overthrown in an instant. One privation succeeded another, till he was plunged in extreme indigence, and prevented from pursuing his usual studies for want of fire and light. “I have found him in winter (says his biographer) at nine in the evening, with his body bent, his head stooped to the floor, and one foot placed upon another, before the glimmering of a small brand, writing upon this new kind of desk, regardless of the inconvenience of an attitude which would have been a torment to any one not excited by the most inconceivable habit of labour, and inspired with the ecstacy of meditation.”
Adanson’s miserable condition was somewhat alleviated by the minister Benezech; but another minister, himself a man of letters, Francois de Neufchateau, restored Adanson to the public notice, and recommended him to his successors. The philosopher, devoted to his studies, and apparently little fitted for society, sought neither patron nor protector; and indeed he seems never to have been raised above that poverty, which was often the lot of genius and learning in the stormy period of the revolution. His obligations to men in power were much less than to a humbler benefactor, whose constant and generous attachment deserves honourable commemoration. This was Anne-Margaret-Roux, the wife of Simon Henry, who, in 1783, at the age of twenty-eight, became the domestic of Adanson, and from that time to his death, stood in the place to him of relations, friends, and fortune. During the extremity of his distress, when he was in want of every necessary, she waited upon him during the day, and passed the night, without his knowledge, in labours, the wages of which she employed in the purchase of coffee and sugar, without which he could do nothing. At the same time, her husband, in the service of another master in Picardy, sent every week bread, meat, and vegetables, and even his savings in money, to supply the other wants of the philosopher. When Adanson’s accumulated infirmities rendered the cares of the wife insufficient, Simon Henry came and assisted her, and no more quitted him.
From the time of his residence at Senegal, Adanson was exceedingly sensible of cold and humidity; and from inhabiting a ground floor, without cellars, in one of the lowest streets in Paris, he was continually labouring under rheumatic affections. The attitude in which he read and wrote, which was that of his body bent in an arm-chair, and his legs raised high on each side of the chimney-place, contributed to deposit humours upon his loins, and the articulations of his thighs. When he had again got a little garden, he used to pass whole days before his plants, sitting upon his crossed legs; and he often forgot, in the ardour of study, to go to bed. This mode of life occasioned an osseous disease in the right thigh. In January, 1806, as he was standing by his fire, he perceived his thigh bend, and would have fallen, had he not been supported by his devoted domestic. He was put to bed, the limb was replaced, and he was attended with the utmost assiduity by the faithful pair, who even tore up their own linen for his dressings. Except his surgeon, they were the only human beings he saw during the last six months of his life—a proof how little he had cultivated friendship among his equals. Napoleon informed of his wretched situation, sent him three thousand livres, which his two attendants managed with the greatest fidelity. Whilst confined to his bed, he continued his usual occupation of reading and writing, and was seen every morning with the pen in his hand, writing without spectacles, in very small characters, at arm’s length. The powers of his understanding were entire when he expired.[287]