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 containing what may be called the universal application of his universal method; for it extended to all known beings and substances, whether in the heavens or on the earth. Twenty-seven large volumes of manuscript were employed in displaying the general relations of all these matters, and their distribution. One hundred and fifty volumes more were occupied with the alphabetical arrangement of 40,000 species. There was also a vocabulary, which contained 200,000 words, with their explanations; and the whole was closed by a number of detached memoirs, 40,000 figures, and 30,000 specimens of the three kingdoms of nature. The committee of the academy, to which the inspection of this enormous mass had been intrusted, warmly recommended to Adanson to separate and publish all that was peculiarly his own, leaving out what was merely compilation; but he obstinately rejected this reasonable advice; by which means science has been deprived of many essays, which, if we may judge from others which he at different times gave to the world, would have possessed great merit.

In the midst of his scientific ardour, Adanson devoted much of his attention to a subject, on which his feelings had probably been powerfully awakened during his residence in Senegal:—we need scarcely name the slave trade. Anxious to contribute to the comforts of Europe, as well as to the security of Africa, he addressed a memoir to the minister, in which he attempted to demonstrate that Senegal was well fitted for the production of all the valuable produce of the West Indian Archipelago, and that, by suitable encouragement, free negroes might be induced to engage in the cultivation of the soil. This proposition received no encouragement, either from the minister or the French African Company; and, as his mistaken notions of patriotism led him to reject all overtures from the friends of the abolition in England, the details of his plan still remain unknown to the world.

Of Adanson’s public life little farther remains to be said; for, after his rejection of the proffered counsel of the academicians, he seems to have pursued his philosophic career in silent and unobtrusive retirement. Engaged in such occupations, it might have been supposed that he would have been exempted from the evils of that terrible revolution which has been productive of so many calamities to his country and to Europe. But the case was very different. As he had devoted his life to science for its own sake, he had never made it the means of acquiring wealth; and having no patrimony from his ancestors, his only fortune consisted of pensions, the reward of his labours in Senegal, and the price of the specimens furnished by him to the royal cabinet. With an injustice and illiberality distinctive of revolutionary Frenchmen, the Constituent Assembly deprived this harmless man, who was known only as an ornament to science, of what he had so hardly earned. A trifling pension from the Academy still remained, and was sufficient for his limited wants; but on the dissolution of that respectable body by the fanatical republicans, this his last resource was also annihilated. When the revolutionary frenzy had subsided, and science again received the homage of Frenchmen, the reproachful poverty of this veteran sage was at length relieved from the public funds; and the founders of the Institute were proud to enrol his name in the catalogue of its members. But his life was now drawing near to its close. He died, after many months of severe suffering, on the 3d of August 1806.

Adanson was never married. In his will, he requested, as the only decoration of his grave, a garland of flowers gathered from the fifty-eight families which he had established;—“A touching, though transitory image,” says Cuvier, “of the more durable monument which he has erected to himself in his works.” His zeal for science, his unwearied industry, and his talents as a philosophical observer, are conspicuous in all his writings. The serenity of his temper, and the unaffected goodness of his heart, endeared him to the few who knew him intimately. On the other hand, it must be admitted, that, from early habits, he trusted too exclusively to his own talents, and would never deign to examine the discoveries of others; so that he persisted in a thousand times refuted errors, with as much pertinacity as he did in the most unquestionable truths of science. Cuvier relates a remarkable instance of his contempt for every thing that did not fall within the scope of his own observations. Although he had bestowed much care on the subject of mosses, yet, in 1800, he was ignorant, not only of the discoveries, but even of the very existence of Hedwig. But, though his vanity was great, it was not accompanied with any malignant feelings; and, notwithstanding his misfortunes, he was never heard to accuse any person of having contributed to inflict them.

His most important works are, 1, his Voyage to Senegal, and 2. his Families of Plants. To the former some essays already noticed were subjoined; and various others were published, at different times, in the Transactions of the Academy of Sciences. The volumes for the years 1759, and 1761, contain his Observations upon the Taret, (a species of shell-fish exceedingly destructive to vessels,) and his Account of the Baobab, an enormous African tree, now known under the name of Adansonia. The volume for 1769 contains an interesting discussion by Adanson, upon the origin of the varieties of cultivated plants; and in those for 1773 and 1779 will be found his valuable observations on gum-bearing trees. In the Transactions of 1767 he gave an account of the Oscillatoria Adansonii, which he considered a self-moving vegetable; but which ought, according to some observations of M. Vaucher, to be ranked as a zoophyte. Besides these Essays, Adanson contributed several valuable articles in natural history, to the earlier part of the Supplement to the first Encyclopédie; and he is also supposed to have been the author of an essay on the Electricity of the Tourmaline, (Paris, 1757), which bears the name of the Duke of Noya Caraffa. See Eloge Historique de M. Adanson, par Cuvier.—''Mem. Mathem. et Physiques, de l’Inst. National'', Tom VII.(.) ADELUNG a very eminent German grammarian, philologer, and general scholar, was born at Spantekow in Pomerania, on the 30th of August 1734. He acquired his elementary instruction at the public school of Anclam, and that