RENE LOUICHE

DESFONTAINES (1750-1833)  , French botanist, was born at Tremblay (Ile-et-Vilaine) on the 14th of February 1750 . After graduating in medicine at Paris, he was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences in 1783 . In the same year he set out for North Africa, on a scientific exploring expedition, and on his return two years afterwards brought with him a large collection of plants, animals, &c., comprising, it is said, 1600 species of plants, of which about 300 were described for the first time . In 1786 he was nominated to the post of professor at the Jardin des Plantes, vacated in his favour by his friend, L . G . Lemonnier . His great work, Flora Atlantica sine historia plantarum quae in Atlante, agro Tunetano et Algeriensi crescunt, was published in 2 vols . 4to in 1798, and he produced in 1804 a Tableau de l'ecole botanique du museum d'histoire naturelle de Paris, of which a third edition appeared in 1831, under the new title Catalogus plantarum horti regii Parisiensis . He was also the author of many memoirs on vegetable anatomy and physiology, descriptions of new genera and species, &c., one of the most important being a " Memoir on the Organization of the Monocotyledons." He died at Paris on the 16th of November 1833 . His Barbary collection was bequeathed to the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, and his general collection passed into the hands of the English botanist, Philip Barker Webb .