| Encyclopaedia Britannica 11th Edition | Public Domain via Project Gutenberg |
(1761-1807), French naturalist, was born at Montpellier on the 28th of February 1761, and was educated for the medical profession. Visiting England, he was admitted in 1872 an honorary member of the Royal Society, and in the same year published at London the first part of his work on fishes, Ichthyologiae Decas I, material for which was communicated to him by Sir Joseph Banks. On his return to Paris he was appointed perpetual secretary to the Society of Agriculture, and in 1789 became a member of the National Assembly. Under the convention he had to leave Paris, and after some dangers he made his way to Madrid. The enmity of the French emigrants, however, drove him from Spain, and afterwards from Lisbon, but at last he found a refuge in Morocco as physician to an embassy sent out by the United States. Later he obtained permission from the Directory to return to France, and in 1805 was appointed professor of botany at Montpellier, where he died on the 17th of January 1807.