TOURNEFORT (Joseph Pitton de), a famous French botanist, born at Aix in Provence in 1656. He had a passion for plants from his childhood, which overcame his father's views in putting him to study philosophy and divinity; therefore on his death he quitted theology, and gave himself up entirely to physic, natural history, and botany. He wandered over the mountains of Dauphiny, Savoy, Catalonia, the Pyrenees, and the Alps, in search of new species of plants, which he acquired with much fatigue and danger. His fame in 1683 procured him the employment of botanic professor, in the king's garden; and by the king's order, he travelled into Spain, Portugal, Holland, and England, where he made prodigious collections of plants. In 1700, Mr Tournefort, in obedience to another order, sailed over all the isles of the Archipelago, upon the coasts of the Black Sea, in Bithynia, Pontus, Cappadocia, Armenia,