The Collections Brought
Home By Le Naturaliste Had Included One Hundred And Eighty Cases Of
Minerals And Animals, Four Cases
Of dried plants, three large casks of
specimens of timber, two boxes of seeds, and sixty tubs of living
plants.
* (* Moniteur, 14th Messidor, Revolutionary Year 11 (July 3,
1803).) On June 9, 1806, a Committee of the Institute, consisting of
Cuvier, Laplace, Bougainville, Fleurieu, and Lacepede, furnished a report
based upon an examination of the scientific specimens and the manuscript
of the first volume of the Voyage de Decouvertes, which, in the meantime,
had been written by Peron. They referred in terms of warm eulogy to the
industry which had collected more than one hundred thousand specimens; to
the new species discovered, estimated by the professors at the Musee at
two thousand five hundred; and to the care and skill displayed by Peron
in describing and classifying, a piece of work appealing with especial
force to the co-ordinating intelligence of Cuvier. They directed
attention to the observations made by the naturalist upon the British
colony at Port Jackson; and their language on this subject may be deemed
generous in view of the fact that England and France were then at war.
"M. Peron," reported the savants, "has applied himself particularly to
studying the details of that vast system of colonisation which is being
developed at once upon a great continent, upon innumerable islands, and
upon the wide ocean. His work in that respect should be of the greatest
interest for the philosopher and the statesman.
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