Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Simond, Alfred

​SIMOND, Alfred, South American botanist, b. in the province of Sao Paulo in 1740; d. in Rome, Italy, in 1801. His father, who was a Frenchman by birth, served in the Portuguese army, and ob- tained with his discharge a land-grant in the prov- ince of Sao Paulo ; and his mother was an Indian. The son was destined for the church, and was about to enter the Jesuit order when it was expelled from Brazil. Returning to his father's farm, he began there the study of agriculture and natural history, which he finished at Paris under the direction of Buffon, who induced him in 1776 to accompany Baron Malouet to Guiana. Here he was employed in draining marshes, and established a model farm for the improvement of agricultural methods. Af- ter Malouet's withdrawal in 1780, Simond remained in the colony without government support, and for several years tried vainly to establish a settlement east of Essequibo river. Returning to France at the beginning of the revolution, he was instructed by the Constituent assembly's committee on foreign affairs to write a detailed memoir concerning the disputed border-line between the French and Por- tuguese possessions in South America, and in 1795 he was sent to Guiana to draw a map of the basin of the Orinoco river. Simond's works include " Memoirs sur les limites veritables de la Guiane FranQaise " (Paris, 1791) ; " Enumeratio plantarum in Guiana crescentium " (2 vols., 1793) ; " Conspec- tus Polygarum florae Guiana? meridionalis " (2 vols.. Rome, 1797) ; and " Flora Brasilia exhibens charac- teres generum et specierum plantarum in provincia Sancti Pauli crescentium " (2 vols., 1800).