(Donati), an eminent naturalist, was born in Padua the 8th of September 1717. He showed from his childhood the greatest inclination for botany and natural history; and, at the age of twelve years, knew all the medicinal plants, and had made a collection of natural productions. When some years older, he profited by the friendship of the celebrated Pontedero, and was generously furnished with books and informations by the living professor Valliferi junior. His best matters were, however, his own mountain and maritime peregrinations; which he began in Dalmatia in 1743, and continued for five years. He was chosen for adjutant to the marquis Poleni, public professor of experimental physic, and cultivated under so great a master all the parts of phycio-mathematics. With him he made a journey to Rome, and there became an intimate friend of Leprotti the papal physician, to whom he afterwards dedicated his Saggio della flora naturale dell' Adriatico; a work of great merit, which count Giannini of Ravenna endeavoured to depreciate, though with little success. The essay of Donati was published in 1750, and was afterwards translated into French. The fame which our author acquired induced his Sardinian majesty to appoint him professor of botany and natural history at Turin. He went there very willingly; made many excursions among the mountains of Savoy and Genoa, and would have been happy could he always have conversed with the mountaineers, who generally are harmless people. The king his master sent him out of the way of his enemies, whose envy and hatred his merit alone had raised; he commanded him to set out on a voyage to Egypt, and from thence to visit Syria, Palestine, Arabia, and the East Indies, to make observations and to collect the rarest productions of nature. In 1759 he was in Alexandria, (aw Egypt as far as the great cataract of the Nile,) and a great part of Palestine, Arabia, and Chaldea; and in all those travels was exposed to suffer the cruel consequences of a bad choice which he had made of his companions. While he staid at Baflora, waiting for orders from court, he fell ill of a putrid fever, and died in a few days. The news of his death came to Turin about the end of October 1763. He left in manuscript two volumes in folio.