A few years later, i.e. in 1836, the French naturalist Alcide d'Orbigny, who had won celebrity at a very early age, was appointed by the governing body of the Museum to the command of an expedition to South America, the special object of which was the study of the natural history of the country. For eight consecutive years D'Orbigny wandered about Brazil, Uruguay, the Argentine Republic, Patagonia, Chili, Bolivia, and Peru.
"Such a journey," says Dumour in his funeral oration on D'Orbigny, "in countries so different in their productions, climate, the character of their soil, and the manners and customs of their inhabitants, was necessarily full of ever fresh perils. D'Orbigny, endowed with a strong constitution and untiring energy, overcame obstacles which would have daunted most travelle
