“ He studied law, and for some time practised his profession in his native city, but he soon abandoned the bar for botany, of which he was passionately fond. He formed a plan to naturalize the cochineal insect in the Franco-American colonies, and after landing in Santo Domingo in 1776, in order to learn how to cultivate it, he penetrated to Mexico in the disguise of a Catalonian physician, at great personal risk, as the Spaniards kept the knowledge of this branch of commerce jealously from strangers. ”