Certainly We Ought To Settle The
Question Now, While We Have It In Our Minds.
Transportation is
imprisonment, certainly, but in a cell more than thirty feet square." The
highwaymen mentioned by Bonaparte must have been remarkable persons.
It
was so like highwaymen to wish to be arrested! Perhaps there were also
birds in the south who were willing to be caught on condition that salt
was put on their tails.)
In addition to these representations, Peron was accorded an interview
with the Minister of Marine, Decres, when, supported by Fleurieu and
other members of the Institute, he explained what the expedition had
done, and exhibited specimens of his collections and of Lesueur's
drawings. Champagny, the Minister of the Interior, was also induced to
listen to the eloquent pleading of the naturalist. As a result, the
Government resolved to publish; and in 1807 appeared the first volume of
the text, together with a thin folio atlas containing a number of
beautiful drawings and two charts. The books were issued under the
superscription, "par ordre de S.M. L'Empereur et Roi." On Sunday, January
12, 1808 - "apres la messe" - Peron, who was accompanied by Lesueur, one of
the artists, had the honour of being admitted to the presence of the
Emperor, and presented him with a copy of the work.* (* Moniteur, January
13, 1808.) The naturalist became somewhat of a favourite with the Empress
Josephine, who on several occasions sent a carriage to his lodgings to
take him to Malmaison; and she treated him "as a good mother would have
treated a dear son."* (* Girard, F. Peron page 50.) He gave to her a pair
of black swans from Australia, and the Empress generously discharged
debts which he had incurred in acquiring part of his collection.
Peron died of a throat disease on December 14, 1810, just seventeen days
after the liberated Flinders reached England. He was buried at Cerilly,
where a monument, designed by Lesueur, marks his grave. At the time of
his death he had not quite finished writing the second volume of the
Voyage de Decouvertes. The conclusion of the work was therefore entrusted
to Louis de Freycinet, who had already been commissioned to produce the
atlas of charts.
Of Peron's personal character, and of the value of his scientific work,
nothing but high praise can be written. He was but a young man when he
died. Had he lived, we cannot doubt that he would have filled an
important place among French men of science, for his diligence was
coupled with insight, and his love of research was as deep as his
aptitude for it was keen. A pleasant picture of the man was penned by
Kerandren, who had been one of the surgeons on the expedition to
Australia. "Peron," he said* (* Moniteur, January 24, 1811. The Moniteur
of June 7, 1812, also contained a eulogy on Peron delivered before the
Societe Medicale d'emulation de Paris, by A.J.B. Louis.), "carried upon
his face the expression of kindliness and sensibility. The fervour of his
mind, the vivacity of his character, were tempered by the extreme
goodness of his heart. He made himself useful to most of those who were
the companions of his voyage. There was joined to his confidence in his
own ability, a great modesty. He was so natural - I would even say so
candid - that it was impossible to resist the charm of his manners and his
conversation."
Apart from his authorship of the first and part of the second volume of
the Voyage de Decouvertes, Peron wrote a number of short "memoires sur
divers sujets," suggested to his mind by observations made during the
voyage. One of the most valuable of these, from a scientific point of
view, was an essay upon the causes of phosphorescence in the sea,
frequently observed in tropical and subtropical regions, but occasionally
in European waters.*
(* Crabbe described it admirably in The Borough (9 103):
"And now your view upon the ocean turn,
And there the splendour of the waves discern;
Cast but a stone, or strike them with an oar,
And you shall flames within the deep explore;
Or scoop the stream phosphoric as you stand,
And the cold flames shall flash along your hand;
When, lost in wonder, you shall walk and gaze
On weeds that sparkle and on waves that blaze.)
Although Peron was not the first naturalist to explain that this aspect
of floating fire given to the waves was due to the presence of multitudes
of living organisms, he was the first naturalist to describe their
structure and functional processes.* (* Phipson on Phosphorescence (1862)
page 113, mentions that as early as 1749 and 1750, Vianetti and
Grixellini, two Venetians, discovered in the waters of the Adriatic
quantities of luminous animalculae; and the true cause of the phenomena
must have occurred to many of those who witnessed it, though groundless
and absurd theories were current. Of the creature discovered and
described by Peron, Phipson says that it is "one of the most curious of
animals. It belongs to the tribe of Tunicata. Each individual resembles a
minute cylinder of glowing phosphorus. Sometimes they are seen adhering
together in such prodigious numbers that the ocean appears as if covered
with an enormous mass of shining phosphorus or molten lava." Professor
Moseley investigated the Pyrosoma while with the Challenger expedition.
He wrote: "A giant Pyrosoma was caught by us in the deep-sea trawl. It
was like a great sac, with its walls of jelly about an inch in thickness.
It was four feet long and ten inches in diameter. When a Pyrosoma is
stimulated by having its surface touched, the phosphorescent light breaks
out just at the spot stimulated, and then spreads over the surface of the
colony to the surrounding animals. I wrote my name with my finger on the
surface of the giant Pyrosoma as it lay on deck, and my name came out in
a few seconds in letters of fire." The author owes this last reference to
an excellent paper on "Phosphorescence in Plants and Animals," by Miss
Freda Bage, M.Sc., printed in the Victorian Naturalist, 21 page 100
November 1904.) His treatise on the Pyrosoma atlanticum is an extremely
interesting example of his scientific work.
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