SAINT-HILAIRE. See Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire....
SAINT-HILAIRE, AugusTE de (1799-1853), French botanist and traveller, was born at Orleans on 4th October 1799. He began to publish memoirs on botanical subjects at an early age. In 1816-22 and in 1830 he travelled in South America, especially in south and central Brazil, and the results of his personal study of the rich flora of the regions through which he passed appeared in several books and numerous articles in scientific journals. These works are most valuable from the copious information they afford not only about the plants and other natural products but also about the native races he encountered. Those by which he is best known are the Flora Brasiliae Meridionalis (3 vols. folio, with 192 coloured plates, 1825-32), published in conjunction with A. de Jussieu and Cambessède, Histoire des plantes les plus remarquables du Brésil et de Paraguay (1 vol. 4to, 30 plates, 1824), Plantes usuelles des Brésiliens (1 vol. 4to, 70 plates, 1827-28), also in conjunction with De Jussieu and Cambessède, Voyage dans le district des Diamants et sur le littoral du Brésil (2 vols. 8vo, 1833). His numerous articles in journals deal largely with the plants of Brazil and the general characters of its vegetation; but Saint-Hilaire also aided much in establishing the natural system of classification on the firm basis of structural characters in the flowers and fruits; and that he recognized the importance of the study of anomalies in this view is shown in more than one of his writings. His Leçons de Botanique, comprenant principalement la Morphologie Végétale, published in 1840, is a very comprehensive and clear exposition of botanical morphology up to 1840 and of its application to systematic botany. He died at Orleans on 30th September 1853.
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