Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Mondésir, Charles Stanislas

MONDESIR, Charles Stanislas (mong-day- zeer), French naturalist, b. in New Oi'leans, La., in 1750; d. in Aix, Provence, in 1817. He entered the church, was provided with an abbey in 1770- through the influence of the Duke de Choiseul, employed in several missions, and in 1781 sent to- Cayenne, where he tried to naturalize the cochineal insect and the nopal-tree on which it feeds. He went afterward to Peru to study the eff>ects of the cholera, which had broken out in Callao, and with other scientists advised the tearing down of many buildings. He afterward made, at the instance of the Spanish authorities, an examination of the mines of Xepero and Barillo, discovered a sulphur- mine in the neighborhood of the latter place, and was still in Peru wdien the expedition round the world under command of Capt. Malaspina arrived in Concepcion in 1790. He immediately joined the explorers, guided them through the Andes range, and accompanied Malas[)ina along the Californian coast to the Straits of Nootka. He then went to- New Spain and lived there several months, occu- pied in forming an herbarium of the plants of the country. The revolution in France had mean- while deprived him of the income from his abbey, and for several years after 1793 he assisted Louis Nee in preparing a " Flora Peruana." Returning to France in 1802, he recovered a part of his estate, and, settling in Aix, devoted the remain- der of his life to the arrangement of the mate- rials he had collected during his twenty years in America. Mondesir's works are few but valuable. They are " Memoire sur la cochenille et le nopal, et de leur aeclimatation a Saint Domingue et a la Guiane " (Paris, 1783) : " Histoire et effets de I'epi- demie de cholera asiatique a Callao dans le Perou, pendant I'ete de 1783 " (1785) ; " Histoire, descrip- tion et proprietes des plantes medicinales du royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne " (2 vols., Aix, 1807) ; " Description des mines d'argent du Perou " (1811); and '-Memoire sur les mines de soufre du Perou, suivi d'une description de celle de Xepero,. et d'une etude sur les precedes d'exploitation " (2 vols., Aix, 1813).