BENJAMIN DELESSERT AND ANTOINE LASÈGUE

Summary A brief biography of the French banker, philantropist, collector and botanist Benjamin Delessert and of the curator of his botanical collections, Antoine Lasègue, author of the Musée botanique de M. Benjamin Delessert . The growth, significance, and ultimate fate of Delessert's herbarium and library are discussed against the background of the French cultural and scientific scene of the first sixty years of the nineteenth century.