(ANTONIO JOSEPH), a Spanish Ecclesiastic, who devoted himself with great assiduity to the study of Botany, and has published several important works, was born in 1746 at Valencia. He received his first education among the Jesuits in that university, and he ever retained the urbanity of character and manners characteristic of that celebrated order of men. These were, in him, accompanied with more estimable qualities of the heart than are usually attributed to that order, or than any other exclusively possesses. He early devoted himself to the studies of divinity and philosophy, and was distinguished for diligence and ability, not only in these pursuits, but in the mathematics, history, and belles lettres. He afterwards removed to Murcia, where he acquired so much credit, that he was chosen by the late Duke de l'Infantado to superintend the education of his sons. In the house of this nobleman he was perfectly domesticated, and when, after a course of years, the death of his patron broke up a circle of more than usual domestic virtue and felicity, at least in that elevated rank of life, the Abbé Cavanilles became only a more valuable and confidential friend of the survivors. He accompanied the sons of the Duke, in their father's lifetime, to Paris in 1777, where he resided twelve years, adding to his various information, and particularly cultivating the science of Botany, with all the aids which that celebrated capital was so well calculated to afford. Here he was more particularly associated with the famous Jussieu, and the pupils of his school. From the Linnaean botanists of Paris he was a good deal estranged. Yet he acquired a great inclination towards the Swedish school, and imbibed many of its good principles.

The first publication of the Abbé Cavanilles was in French, entitled Observations sur l'article "Espagne" de la nouvelle Encyclopédie. This pamphlet contained a defence of his country, against what appeared to him an unfair attack upon it; but we know not the particular subjects of the discussion. We have no difficulty in conceiving that they might be manifold, and that there were few opinions upon which a man of Cavanilles' correctness and orthodoxy of character, to say nothing of his patriotism, was likely to agree with the writers of the above-mentioned celebrated work.

He soon after devoted himself to a study which promised him a less thorny path. In 1785 he published at Paris his first Dissertation upon Monadelphous Plants, a Latin 4to, containing the species of the genus Sida, with some plants nearly related thereto. The plates, uncoloured, were executed from his own drawings; as were those of the rest of his numerous publications. The specimens delineated in this first essay, were too small and imperfect. In that respect his following dissertations, making ten in all, have a considerable superiority. His subsequent figures were also better engraved. The descriptions are full and correct; the new species numerous; and the specific characters tolerably classical, though not quite uncontaminated by the feebleness and ambiguity of the French school. This work, in its beginning, not being received by the Linnaean botanists of Paris, and especially by L'Heritier, with Cavanilles, any respectful attention, the author, in an evil hour, was induced to complain, in the Journal de Paris, of neglect, and of injustice. L'Heritier had not noticed the book in his Stirpes Novae; had published the same plants by different names, without citing Cavanilles; and had even antedated some of his own Fasciculi, to conceal, as it appeared, this literary incorrectness. His reply could not, in the opinion of unprejudiced witnesses, clear him of illiberal conduct; though, it is very certain, he neither did nor could borrow anything from Cavanilles. It would have been better to have declared the truth; that his own plates were already engraved with different names, or that he had at least chosen such as seemed to him preferable. The authority of L'Heritier's works, by their transcendent merit, has prevailed, while Cavanilles has retained all the credit due to correctness of principle and intention. The 9th and 10th Fasciculi of Cavanilles, on the Monadelphous Plants, were indeed published at Madrid, to which place the author returned in 1790. The number of plates, in the whole work, are 296, many of which, especially in the earlier part, contain several species. It cannot be denied that the merit of this work kept increasing as it advanced. The abilities of the writer gained strength by exercise, and his knowledge was enriched by experience. He is charged with admitting, as monadelphous, too many plants, the union of whose stamens is very slight or uncertain; but it were ungrateful to complain of any book for the riches of its materials. A more real fault is, that usual one, of too great, and artificial, a subdivision of genera. This is also the fault of the school in which he studied, though the great man at its head is perhaps as free from it as any leading writer.

Soon afterwards the Abbé Cavanilles began a larger and more comprehensive publication, in folio, entitled, Icones et Descriptiones Plantarum quae aut sponte in Hispania crescunt, aut in Hortis hospitantur. The first volume appeared in 1791, containing 100 plates, with ample descriptions. It was followed by five more, of equal size and merit, the last of which came out in 1801. The whole work is enriched with critical remarks, and with much economical, as well as what may be called picturesque and sentimental, matter, respecting many native Spanish plants. The exotic part of these volumes is derived from the highly valuable and novel discoveries of the Spaniards in Mexico, Peru, and Chili, and the acquisitions of some voyagers to New Holland and the Philippine Islands. Hence numerous very fine plants, originally discovered by our own celebrated circumnavigators, but unfortunately not yet published by them, have first been made known in the pages of Cavanilles.

In the course of the botanical tours of our author, he collected materials for a general History of the Kingdom of Valencia, which appeared in 1795, in Spanish, making two volumes. This work, which we have never seen, is said to be rich, not only in what relates to the three kingdoms of nature, but likewise in statistic and antiquarian information.

Having, in June 1801, been entrusted with the Directorship of the Royal Garden at Madrid, he published in 1802, another work in his native tongue, Cavanilles containing the characters and descriptions of the plants demonstrated in his public botanical lectures. To these are prefixed an exposition of the elementary principles of the science, with explanations of botanic terms. Cavanilles was also a frequent and important contributor to the periodical work, entitled Aules de Ciencias Naturales, published at Madrid. Some observations of his, translated from thence, may be found in Dr Sim's and Mr König's Annals of Botany, Vol. I. 409. The first of these indeed, relative to certain seemingly lenticular bodies, supposed to have an important share in the impregnation of ferns and mosses, he has himself contradicted, as arising from an optical deception. His candid avowal of this, in a letter to Dr Swartz, is published in volume second of the said Annals, p. 587. We think him also mistaken in the true stigma of the Iris, his opinion being sufficiently refuted by those of Kolreuter and Sprengel, given in a note, in the very place just quoted; nor is his idea of the stamens of certain Asclepiadeæ correct. If he errs however, he errs with great authorities.

The subject of our present memoir undoubtedly excelled more in practical observation, than in physiological speculation. He is said to have prepared, and partly printed, the first volume of a Hortus Martitensis, being a sort of sequel to his Icones; for it was intended to contain, not merely the figures and descriptions of curious or new plants from the garden, but also of rare dried specimens from the museum at Madrid. This work, with any other project in favour of science which he might have formed, was cut short by his death, in May 1804, in the fifty-ninth year of his age. An engraved portrait of the Abbé Cavanilles, at the age of forty-four, is given in Schrader's Neues Journal, published at Erfurt, in 1805. Dr Swartz in the Annals of Botany above quoted, gives this testimony to his worth. "Cavanilles was, like many others, often rather hasty in his conclusions; but always eager to promote science. He was, indeed, a man of a very noble mind, and of the most generous communicative turn; so that I feel I have lost much by his untimely decease, which I shall ever regret." In these sentiments the writer of this article most sincerely concurs.