Julien François Desjardins (27 July 1799, Centre de Flacq – 18 April 1840,

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

) was a French zoologist, the son of Julien Jouan Desjardins (1766–1853) and Henriette Émilie Marcotte. He married Julie Renée Maréchal, his first cousin by his mother. He studied in Paris from 1822 to 1824 under

Cuvier Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric, baron Cuvier (23 August 1769 – 13 May 1832), known as Georges Cuvier (; ), was a French natural history, naturalist and zoology, zoologist, sometimes referred to as the "founding father of paleontology". Cuv ...

, and was influenced by

Louis Jacques Thénard Louis Jacques Thénard (4 May 177721 June 1857) was a French chemist. Life He was born in a farm cottage near Nogent-sur-Seine in the Champagne district the son of a farm worker. In the post-Revolution French educational system, most boys rec ...

(1777–1857),

Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac ( , ; ; 6 December 1778 – 9 May 1850) was a French chemist and physicist. He is known mostly for his discovery that water is made of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen by volume (with Alexander von Humboldt), f ...

(1778–1850),

Pierre André Latreille Pierre André Latreille (; 29 November 1762 – 6 February 1833) was a French zoology, zoologist, specialising in arthropods. Having trained as a Roman Catholic priest before the French Revolution, Latreille was imprisoned, and only regained hi ...

(1762–1833), René Desfontaines (1750–1831) and others. He embarked on a career in civil engineering, but soon realised that he should return to his original passion of

natural history Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi, and plants, in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. A person who studies natural history is cal ...

and studied at the

Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle The French National Museum of Natural History ( ; abbr. MNHN) is the national natural history museum of France and a of higher education part of Sorbonne University. The main museum, with four galleries, is located in Paris, France, within the Ja ...

. With Charles Telfair, Wenceslas Bojer, and Jacques Delisse, Desjardins took part in founding the ' on 11 August 1829. He was the first secretary of this Society and editor of the publication ' until 1839, when he left for France to publish his observations. His premature death led to the acquisition of his manuscript by

Félix Édouard Guérin-Méneville Félix Édouard Guérin-Méneville, also known as F. E. Guerin, (12 October 1799, in Toulon – 26 January 1874, in Paris) was a French entomologist. Life and work Guérin-Méneville changed his surname from Guérin in 1836. He was the author o ...

(1799–1874), who never published it. An excerpt from the

Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London The ''Journal of Zoology'' is a scientific journal concerning zoology, the study of animals. It was founded in 1830 by the Zoological Society of London and is published by Wiley-Blackwell. It carries original research papers, which are targeted t ...

of a meeting held on 23 October 1838 reads:

A letter was read from M. Julien Desjardins, Secretary of the Natural History Society of Mauritius, stating that it was his intention to leave that island on 1 January 1839 for England, with a large collection of objects in natural history, many of which he intended for the Society.

Desjardins made a thorough search for fossils in his home region of Flacq, and found fragments of the osseous cover and

humerus The humerus (; : humeri) is a long bone in the arm that runs from the shoulder to the elbow. It connects the scapula and the two bones of the lower arm, the radius (bone), radius and ulna, and consists of three sections. The humeral upper extrem ...

bones of endemic

tortoise Tortoises ( ) are reptiles of the family Testudinidae of the order Testudines (Latin for "tortoise"). Like other turtles, tortoises have a shell to protect from predation and other threats. The shell in tortoises is generally hard, and like o ...

s. At Plaine des Roches and at Montagne Blanche, he found them scattered on the surface. At Mare La Chaux and Riche Mare, they occurred in mud and shallow water. ' lists 28 species with the

specific name Specific name may refer to: * in Database management systems, a system-assigned name that is unique within a particular database In taxonomy, either of these two meanings, each with its own set of rules: * Specific name (botany), the two-part (bino ...

''desjardinsii''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Desjardins, Julien Francois French zoologists 1799 births 1840 deaths Mauritian scientists People from Flacq District 19th-century French zoologists