Pierre Marie Auguste, a distinguished French naturalist, was the son of a schoolmaster, and was born at Montpellier in 1761. He was educated at Montpellier for the medical profession; and such was the estimation of his abilities in the university, that when only eighteen years of age he was appointed to fill a professor's chair. So great, indeed, was his reputation, that a few years afterwards he was admitted a member of the Academy of Sciences by a unanimous vote, a circumstance till that time without example in the annals of that learned body. Botany seems to have been the science to which he was at first chiefly devoted; and he laboured with much zeal to establish the system of Linnæus in France. With this view, as well as for his own improvement, he went to Paris, and visited the various museums and collections. He next came to England, and was admitted in 1782 an honorary member of the Royal Society. It was at this period that he published at London his work on fishes, describing the most rare species, under the title of Ichthyologia, seu Piscium Descriptiones et Icones. On his return to Paris he was appointed perpetual secretary to the Society of Agriculture, an office which the intendant Berthier de Sauvigny resigned in his favour.

In 1789 he was nominated a member of the Electoral College of Paris, an office which required him to serve as magistrate whenever his colleagues were in need of assistance in the exercise of their functions; and on the first of these occasions, as he was proceeding to the Hôtel de Ville, he had the misfortune to see his friend and protector Berthier harshly murdered by the populace. His own life was frequently in peril during the tumults that ensued, and when he had the charge of superintending the supply of provisions for the capital. In 1791 he had a seat in the legislative assembly; but, disgusted with politics, he quitted Paris the year following, and repaired to his native city. Persecution followed him in his retreat, and he was glad after many dangers to effect his escape to Madrid, where he was liberally assisted by the literati of that city. The malignity of the French emigrants, however, who could not pardon his having held any office under the revolutionary government, still pursued him, and drove him from Spain, and afterwards from Lisbon, where he had sought an asylum. At last he went out as physician to an embassy which the United States sent to the emperor of Morocco; and on this occasion his friend Sir Joseph Banks, informed of his distresses, remitted him £1,000. After residing for some time at Morocco, he obtained from the French directory permission to return to France; and was appointed by them consul at Teneriffe, where he resided for two years. On his return in 1797 he was chosen member of the institute, and was reinstated in his botanical professorship at Montpellier, with the direction of the botanical garden. He was afterwards elected a member of the legislative body, but died of apoplexy on the 27th July 1807. France is indebted to him for the introduction of the Merino sheep and Angola goats.

Besides the work on fishes, already noticed, the following are his principal productions: Varia Positiones circa Respirationem, Montpellier, 1788; Essai sur l'Histoire Naturelle de quelques espèces de Monkeys décrites à la manière de Linné, Svo, 1784, which is a translation of a Latin work on the monkeys, the original of which appeared in German in 1783; Essai sur l'Éducation du Chevalier à l'Usage des Cultivateurs, 2 vols. 12mo, Paris, 1787-8; Notice pour servir à l'Histoire de l'École de Médecine de Montpellier pendant l'An VI, Svo, Montpellier, 1795. He was also a conductor, conjointly with Parmentier, Dubois, and Lefebure, of La Feuille du Cultivateur, in 8 vols. 4to, published in 1788 and the following years.