Page:The lives of celebrated travellers (Volume 2).djvu/13

 THE LIVES

OF

CELEBRATED TRAVELLERS.

JOSEPH PITTON DE TOURNEFORT.

Born 1656.—Died 1708.

Tournefort was born at Aix, in Provence, on the 5th of June, 1656. He received the first rudiments of his education at the Jesuits' College of that city; where manifestations of his passion for botany, to the gratification of which he devoted the whole of his life, appeared at a very early age. As soon as he beheld plants, says Fontenelle, he felt himself a botanist. He desired to learn their names; he carefully observed their differences, and sometimes absented himself from his class in order to botanize in the country, preferring nature to the language of the ancient Romans, which at that time was regarded as the principal object of education. Like the majority of those who have distinguished themselves in any department of science or art, he was his own master, and in a very short time had made himself acquainted with the plants found in the environs of his native city.

For the philosophy then taught in the schools he had but little predilection. Being in search of nature, which was almost wholly banished from the