Michel Adanson, a French naturalist, of Scotch descent, born at Aix, April 7, 1727, died in Paris, Aug. 3, 1806. At the age of 21 he went at his own cost, though of very limited fortune, to the French colony of Senegal to study nature. After five years he returned to France with a fine collection. He first attacked the Linnaean method, and his writings paved the way for the acceptance by the scientific world of Jussieu's system. The generic name Adansonia was given in his honor to the baobab tree, of which he gave the first scientific account. He was also distinguished for philanthropy, and proposed to found a colony with free negroes in Senegal, which was not, however, favored by the ministry of Louis XV. His name is associated with a plan for a vast cyclopaedia of natural history, which the academy had not the courage to take up. He, however, persisted in his ideas, devoting many years to the collection of immense masses of manuscript material. By the revolution he was stripped of everything, and reduced to such abject poverty, that when he was invited in 1798 to take his seat as a member of the reorganized institute (having been a member of the academy since 1759), he was obliged to decline for want of shoes.

He afterward received a small pension, in the enjoyment of which he died in his 80th year. His principal works are: Histoire naturelle du Senegal (1 vol. 4to, 1757, including L'Histoire des coquillages, the earliest attempt at a scientific classification of shells according to their inhabitants), and Methode naturelle pour ap~ prendre a connaitre les differentes families des plantes (2 vols. 8vo, 1764, written with a phonetic orthography of his own invention). He also contributed many valuable memoirs to the publications of the academy of sciences.