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ADANSON, MICHEL (1727-1806)

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Originally appearing in Volume V01, Page 183 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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ADANSON, See also:MICHEL (1727-1806) , See also:French naturalist, of Scottish descent, was See also:born on the 7th of See also:April .1727, at See also:Aix, in See also:Provence. After leaving the See also:College Sainte Barbe in See also:Paris, he was employed in the cabinets of R. A. F. See also:Reaumur and See also:Bernard de See also:Jussieu, as well as in the Jardin See also:des Plantes. At the end of 1748 he See also:left See also:France on an exploring expedition to See also:Senegal, which from the unhealthiness of its See also:climate was a terra incognita to naturalists. His ardour remained unabated during the five years of his See also:residence in See also:Africa. He collected and described, in greater or less detail, an immense number of animals and See also:plants; collected specimens of every See also:object of See also:commerce; delineated maps of the See also:country; made systematic meteorological and astronomical observations; and prepared grammars and dictionaries of the See also:languages spoken on the See also:banks of the Senegal. After his return to Paris in 1754 he made use of a small portion of the materials he had collected in his Histoire naturelle du Senegal (Paris, 1757). This See also:work has a See also:special See also:interest from the See also:essay on shells, printed at the end of it, where Adanson proposed his universal method, a See also:system of See also:classification distinct from those of See also:Buffon and See also:Linnaeus. He founded his classification of all organized beings on the See also:consideration of each individual See also:organ. As each organ gave See also:birth to new relations, so he established a corresponding number of arbitrary arrangements.

Those beings possessing the greatest number of similar See also:

organs were referred to one See also:great See also:division, and the relationship was considered more remote in proportion to the dissimilarity of organs. In 1763 he published his Families naturelles des planks. In this work he See also:developed the principle of arrangement above mentioned, which, in its adherence to natural botanical relations, was based on the system of J. P. See also:Tournefort, and had been anticipated to some extent nearly a See also:century before by See also:John See also:Ray. The success of this work was hindered by its innovations in the use of terms, which were ridiculed by the defenders of the popular sexual system of Linnaeus; but it did much to open the way for the See also:establishment, by means principally of A. L. de Jussieu's Genera Plantarum (1789), of the natural method of the classification of plants. In 1774 Adanson submitted to the consideration of the See also:Academy of Sciences an immense work, extending to all known beings and substances. It consisted of 27 large volumes of See also:manuscript, employed in displaying the See also:general relations of all these matters, and their See also:distribution; 150 volumes more, occupied with the alphabetical arrangement of 40,000 See also:species; a vocabulary, containing 200,000 words, with their explanations; and a number of detached See also:memoirs, 40,000 figures and 30,000 specimens of the three kingdoms of nature. The See also:committee to which the inspection of this enormous See also:mass was entrusted strongly recommended Adanson to See also:separate and publish all that was peculiarly his own, leaving out what was merely compilation. He obstinately rejected this See also:advice; and the huge work, at which he continued to labour, was never published. He had been elected a member of the Academy of Sciences in 1759, and he-See also:ADDAX 183 latterly subsisted on a small See also:pension it had conferred on him.

Of this he was deprived in the See also:

dissolution of the Academy by the Constituent See also:Assembly, and was consequently reduced to such a See also:depth of poverty as to be unable to appear before the French See also:Institute when it invited him to take his See also:place among its members. Afterwards he was granted a pension sufficient to relieve his See also:simple wants. He died at Paris after months of severe suffering, on the 3rd of See also:August 18o6, requesting, as the only decoration of his See also:grave, a See also:garland of See also:flowers gathered from the fifty-eight families he had differentiated—" a touching though transitory See also:image," says See also:Cuvier, " of the more durable See also:monument which he has erected to himself in his See also:works." Besides the books already mentioned he published papers on the See also:ship-See also:worm, the See also:baobab See also:tree, the Adansonia digitata of Linnaeus, the origin of the varieties of cultivated plants, and See also:gum-producing trees.

End of Article: ADANSON, MICHEL (1727-1806)

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