At home all day; posted in my day book and cut out round frocks. In the evening, began Tournefort’s Voyage into the Levant.
Read his Life and the Eulogium on it by M Fontenelle. Memoranding on his life: He was born at Aix; first travels to Provence, Savoy and Dauphine; then Montpellier and Spain; he was robbed on the Pyrenees, traversed Catalonia. In a house where he lodged near Perpignan [it?] fell in the night, by which accident he miraculously escaped with his life, being some time buried in the ruins. Returned to Montpellier, then to Orange and Aix.
He likewise travelled to the Alps, Spain, Portugal, England and Holland — all in the search of botany, chemistry, medicine and anatomy, all of which he seemed to excell in, and in particular in botany, in which he seems never to have been excelled, it being his greatest talent. He renewed and, which is more, demonstrated a system of the vegetative life of stones, He also found several surprising particulars relating to the formation of coral, sponges, sea mushrooms, lithophytes and stony plants or others that grow at the bottom of the sea. He also extended his system of vegetation to minerals, and even to metals, rock crystals and precious stones. He also went further and proved that shells vegetate. He was upon the whole a true philosopher, a good geometrician, an attentive anatomist, an exact chemist and a penetrating naturalist. He died at Paris the 28th December 1708.