Feuillee, Louis

, a Franciscan friar, of the order of minims, celebrated as a botanist and natural philosopher, was born at Majie in Provence, in 1660. He first visited Cartbagena and Martinico, in 1703 and 1704, and afterwards travelled to the western coast of South America, investigating the natural productions of New Spain and the neighbouring islands, from 1707 to 1712. All these voyages he accomplished under the patronage of Louis XIV. by whom he was liberally pensioned, and who caused an observatory to be built for him at Marseilles, in which town Feuillee, worn out with his labours, died in 1732. He is said to have been of that modest simple character, which best becomes an ecclesiastic and a true philosopher, except perhaps 'in his resentment against Monsieur Frezier, a rival philosopher and naturalist, sent out likewise by Louis XIV. whom he criticises at some length, in a rather contemptuous style, in the preface to the Journal of one of his voyages.

Feuillee published “Journal des Observations physiques, mathematiques, & botaniques, faites par l‘ordre du Hoi, sur les cotes orientates (occidentales) de l’Amerique meridionale, & dans les Indes occidentales, depuis l’anne 1707 jusques en 1712,Paris, 1714, 2 vols. 4to, with numerous plates. This work is not elegant in style, but valuable for solid information upon all the subjects announced in its title, with various incidental matter besides. What relates to Peru makes a principal part of these volumes. In his descriptions of plants, their reputed medical virtues met with laudable attention from Feuillee, and are always added to his botanical descriptions, and he describes some species still unknown to us. The magnificent Flori-pondio (Datura arborea) was here first made known to botanists. He published another quarto volume, with a similar title, in 1725, | in the preface to which he censures Frezier, as above mentioned. The appendix, of 7 1 pages, with 50 plates, describes many extremely interesting plants of Chili. These 100 botanical plates were, according to Haller, republished at Nuremberg in 1756 and 1757, in 2 vols. 4to, with a German translation of their descriptions. The original drawings of Feuillee, many of which were never published, remain in the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris, but they are very rudely coloured, and without any pretensions to the skill of a painter. 1