At this remote period of time, I am altogether without record as to the movements of young Michaux immediately after his landing on our shores. The only source where I expected, naturally, to obtain information, was the manuscript journal in which his father was in the habit of registering the daily incidents of his eventful life, and which had been deposited by his son in the library of the American Philosophical Society. Unfortunately, this journal has become incomplete through the absence of three of its fasciculi, containing the years 1785,1786, and 1790, which were lost in the shipwreck of the elder Michaux on the coast of Holland. In the fasciculus of 1787, young Michaux's name appears for the first time on the date of May 6, as accompanying his father in his exploration to the. sources of the Keovee River. In the next spring he is seen again with him, journeying into the interior of Florida. He is afterwards mentioned several times as being retained at the Charleston Nursery, either on account of ill health, or intrusted with the management of the plantation, daring the journeys of his indefatigable and ever moving father.

In the farther perusal of the manuscript, I learn, at the date of the 20th of September, 1789, that his son, walking along the road, was hit by a man shooting at partridges, and that a grain of shot had penetrated his left eye, below the pupil. From that date to December following, he occasionally speaks of the state of his son, of the treatment applied to his case, and, especially, of the great despondency of mind which the patient had fallen into, from the apprehension of losing his eye. But here, again, we arrive at the third lost fasciculus, and I cannot ascertain the final result of the accident, nor at what time, precisely, young Michaux returned to France.

His return must have taken place in the first three months of 1790, for in the manuscript of the following year, on the 17th of January, the elder Michaux acknowledges the receipt of a letter from his son, dated Paris, April, 1790, but nothing more is said about the wounded eye. To that accident may be attributed the partial deprivation of sight With which Michaux was afflicted.

Young Michaux reached his country at the very outbreak of the French Revolution, in which he is said to have warmly sympathized with the republican party. Such a course was not, perhaps, expected from one who had been brought up on a royal domain, and was, to a certain degree, indebted to royal munificence. But his exalted patriotism, his ambition to serve his country, his frank and bold temper, his love of liberty imbibed in this free and happy land - all these together must have raised his spirits to a high pitch; but what must have been the vexation he experienced when, on his return, he scarcely found a few remnants of the several hundred thousand young trees which his father and himself had reared in their American nurseries, and sent home for the particular benefit of his country. One-half had been given away by the queen to her imperial father of Austria; the rest had been squandered among the minions of the court, to embellish their grounds, or shamefully neglected in the royal nurseries of Rambouillet.

In the mean time the elder Michaux was continuing his explorations in North America. He travelled in all directions, over more than three thousand miles, during the eleven years which he spent on this side of the Atlantic. While thus actively engaged, the political storm raging in his country had Brought'on immense changes in his situation. France, ruined by royal profligacy, invaded by famine, deluged with the blood of her best citizens, convulsed by civil war, and fighting single-handed with the whole of Europe, could no longer afford to pay her naturalists abroad. Michaux was forgotten, and ceased gradually to receive his salary. After having borrowed money on his own account, after having sacrificed a portion of his own and of his son's fortune, he found himself under the necessity of returning to his country. Unfortunately, he was shipwrecked on the coast of Holland, and, after having lost the best part of his immense collections, he arrived in Paris on the 26th of December, 1796, after an absence of eleven years and four months.

On his arrival in his native land, the elder Michaux occupied his time in the cultivation of the vegetable treasures which he had forwarded from the United States, and in arranging his materials for the History of the North American Oaks, and for his Flora Boreali Americana. In these various labors he was assisted by his son, who, in the mean time, was studying medicine under the celebrated Cor-visart, and attending the clinical lectures of Desault, chief surgeon of the Hotel Dieu, with the view of returning to the United ,States and devoting himself to the practice of medicine; but such was not his destiny.

Neither the retired habits of a student, nor the easy and monotonous life of a Parisian abode, suited temperaments like those of the two Michaux. Such men needed activity, and change of scene, with its toils and perils. Both were animated with the same spirit of enterprise - with the same conviction that their efforts, employed in other directions, could afford more benefit to their country; hence they were endeavoring, through the influence of their numerous friends, to infuse their views and projects into the minds of their fellow-members of the Central Society Of Agriculture, and of the ministers of Napoleon, then First Consul of the French repnblic.

In this they both finally succeeded. The elder Michaux accepted a commission of naturalist in the scientific expedition led by Captain Baudin, and bound to the Australian seas, on condition, however, that he would be permitted to remain at the Isle of France, if he desired so to do. Disgusted with Baudin's haughty manners and want of courtesy to the scientific corps, Andre Michaux abandoned the expedition at Mauritius, where he remained six months, and thence started for the island of Madagascar, which, he thought, wonld afford him better opportunities of advancing the science of botany, and making himself more useful to his country.