Dodart, who had undertaken the charge of being ambitious on his account, procured him, at the restoration of the academy in 1699, to be nominated associate botanist; not knowing, what he would doubtless have been pleased with the knowledge of, that he introduced into that assembly the man that was to succeed him in his place of Pensionary.

Dr Morin was not one who had upon his hands the labour of adapting himself to the duties of his condition, but always found himself naturally adapted to them. He had, therefore, no difficulty in being constant at the assemblies of the academy, notwithstanding the distance of places, while he had strength enough to support the journey. But his regimen was not equally effectual to produce vigour as to prevent distempers; and being 64 years old at his admission, he could not continue his assiduity more than a year after the death of Dodart, whom he succeeded in 1707.

When Mr Tournefort went to pursue his botanical inquiries in the Levant, he desired Dr Morin to supply his place of Demonstrator of the Plants in the Royal Garden, and rewarded him for the trouble, by inscribing to him a new plant which he brought from the East, by the name of Morina Orientalis, as he named others the Dodarto, the Fagonne, the Bignonne, the Phelipee. These are compliments proper to be made by the botanists, not only to those of their own rank, but to the greatest persons; for a plant is a monument of a more durable nature than a medal or an obelisk; and yet, as a proof that even these vehicles are not always sufficient to transmit to futurity the name

conjoined with them, the Nicotiana is now scarcely known by any other name than that of tobacco.

Dr Morin, advancing far in age, was now forced to take a servant, and what was yet a more essential alteration, prevailed upon himself to take an ounce of wine a day, which he measured with the same exactness as a medicine bordering upon poison. He quitted at the same time all his practice in the city, and confined it to the poor of his neighbourhood, and his visits to the Hotel Dieu; but his weakness increasing, he was forced to increase his quantity of wine, which yet he always continued to adjust by weight.*

At 78 his legs could carry him no longer, and he scarcely left his bed; but his intellects continued unimpaired, except in the last six months of his life. He expired, or, to use a more proper term, went out, on the 1st of March 1714, at the age of 80 years, without any distemper, and merely for want of strength, having enjoyed by the benefit of his regimen a long and healthy life, and a gentle and easy death.

This extraordinary regimen was but part of the daily regulation of his life, of which all the offices were carried on with a regularity and exactness

The practice of Dr Morin is forbidden, I believe, by every writer that has left rules for the preservation of health, and is directly opposite to that of Cornaro, who by his regimen repaired a broken constitution, and protracted his life, without any painful infirmities, or any decay of his intellectual abilities, to more than a hundred years: it is generally agreed, that as men advance in years, they ought to take lighter sustenance, and in less quantities; and reason seems easily to discover that as the concoctive powers grow weaker, they ought to labour less. Orig. Edit.

nearly approaching to that of the planetary motions.

He went to bed at seven, and rose at two, throughout the year. He spent in the morning three hours at his devotions, and went to the Hotel Dieu in the summer between five and six, and in the winter between six and seven, hearing mass for the most part at Notre Dame. After his return he read the holy scripture, dined at eleven, and when it was fair weather walked till two in the royal garden, where he examined the new plants, and gratified his earliest and strongest passion. For the remaining part of the day, if he had no poor to visit, he shut himself up, and read books of literature or physic, but chiefly physic, as the duty of his profession required. This likewise was the time he received visits, if any were paid him. He often used this expression, "Those that come to see me, do me honour; those that stay away, do me a favour." It is easy to conceive that a man of this temper was not crowded with salutations: there was only now and then an Antony that would pay Paul a visit.

Among his papers was found a Greek and Latin index to Hippocrates, more copious and exact than that of Pini, which he had finished only a year before his death. Such a work required the assiduity and patience of an hermit.*

This is an instance of the disposition generally found in writers of lives, to exalt every common occurrence and action into wonder. Are not indexes daily written by men who neither receive nor expect any loud applauses for their labours? Orig. Edit.

There is likewise a journal of the weather, kept without interruption, for more than forty years, in which he has accurately set down the state of the barometer and thermometer, the dryness and mois, ture of the air, the variations of the wind in the course of the day, the rain, the thunders, and even the sudden storms, in a very commodious and concise method, which exhibits, in a little room, a great train of different observations. What num, bers of such remarks had escaped a man less uniform in his life, and whose attention had been extended to common objects!

All the estate which he left is a collection of medals, another of herbs, and a library rated at two thousand crowns: which make it evident that he spent much more upon his mind than upon his body.

BURMAN.*

PETER BURMAN was born at Utrecht, on the 26th day of June 1668. The family from which he descended has for several generations produced men of great eminence for piety and learning; and his father, who was professor. of divinity in the university, and pastor of the city of Utrecht, was equally celebrated for the strictness of his life, the efficacy and orthodoxy of his sermons, and the learning and perspicuity of his academical lectures.

From the assistance and instruction which such a father would doubtless have been encouraged, by the genius of this son, not to have omitted, he was unhappily cut off at eleven years of age, being at that time, by his father's death, thrown entirely under the care of his mother, by whose diligence, piety, and prudence, his education was so regulated, that he had scarcely any reason, but filial tenderness, to regret the loss of his father.

He was about this time sent to the public school of Utrecht to be instructed in the learned languages; and it will convey no common idea of his capacity and industry to relate, that he had passed through

First printed in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1742. N.