the strait of Magellan. Thence they they went northwesterly into the Pacific Ocean; passed the Paumotu, or Low Archipelago; and visited Tahiti, of which Commerson has left a famous description in a letter to Lalande; continued to sail westwardly; sighted Samoa; were perplexed by the Great Barrier Reef, and had to make a back track along the Louisiade Archipelago to the Solomon Islands; between New Britain and New Ireland; along the northern shores of Papua; thence to Batavia; and finally, to Port Louis. Here M. Poivre, intendant of the colony, had orders from the authorities at home to retain Commerson for service under his direction; while Véron, the astronomer, was directed to proceed to India, to observe the forthcoming transit of Venus. Commerson was the first European to ascend the native volcano of Bourbon and to make a complete collection of mineralogical specimens from its hardly accessible craters. His account of a pygmy tribe inhabiting the mountain regions of Madagascar, after having been long contradicted, has recently been confirmed by the Rev. E. O. MacMahon, of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.
Commerson's career now soon came to an end. Among the results of political changes in the colony and in France were the withdrawal of ministerial patronage from him, the stoppage of his salary as naturalist to the king, and his dismissal. His health had already given way in consequence of the exposures to which he had subjected himself, and he was suffering from dysentery and rheumatism. He gave himself up to the study of the flora of Mauritius, writing to his friend Lemeunier: "My plants, my dear plants, have consoled me for all. I have found the nepenthe, the sweet assuagement of cares." He sought rest in another part of the island, but died, March 14, 1773, at the house of M. Bézac, a planter, near Flacq.
Commerson left his collections of plants, fishes, minerals, and manuscripts, thirty-two cases in all, to the Royal Museum of Natural History in Paris. They included, with two hundred folio volumes of herbaria, five thousand plants, of which three thousand species and one hundred and sixty genera were new to science.
