ÁXONTO JOSE, a Spanish ecclesiastic, who devoted himself with great assiduity to the study of botany, and has published several important works, was born in 1745, at Valencia. He received his first education among the Jesuits in that university, and he ever afterwards retained the urbanity of character and manners characteristic of that celebrated order of men. 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 Duke de l'Infantado to superintend the education of his sons. He accompanied them 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.

He soon afterwards devoted himself to a study which promised him a less thorny path. In 1785 he published at Paris his first Dissertation upon Monodelphous 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'Héritier, with any respectful attention, the author, in an evil hour, was induced to complain, in the Journal de Paris, of neglect and injustice. L'Héritier 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, in order 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 ninth and tenth fasciculi of Cavanilles, on the Monodelphous 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 monodelphous too many plants, the union of whose stamens is very light or uncertain; a more real fault is, the usual one of too great and artificial a subdivision of genera.

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 1793, 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 statistical and antiquarian information.

Having in June 1801 been intrusted with the directorship of the royal garden at Madrid, he published in 1802 another work in his native tongue, containing the characters and descriptions of the plants demonstrated in his public botanical lectures. To these is prefixed an exposition of the elementary principles of the science, together with explanations of botanical terms. Cavanilles was also a frequent and important contributor to the periodical work entitled Anales de Ciencias Naturales, published at Madrid. Some observations of his, translated from this journal, may be found in Dr Sinn'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 Schwartz, 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 Asclepiadea 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 Matritensis, 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 was cut short by his death, in May 1804, in the fifty-ninth year of his age.