Xavier Montrouzier

Xavier Montrouzier

Jean Xavier Hyacinthe Montrouzier (born December 3, 1820 near Montpellier , † May 6, 1897 in Saint-Louis (New Caledonia) ) was a French clergyman and naturalist. As a missionary in Melanesia , he particularly researched the fauna and flora of New Caledonia .

Life

Montrouzier was the son of a wealthy landowner who lived near Montpellier and already excelled in the natural sciences as a student. He won a place at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris and studied at the Sorbonne , where he was assistant to Antoine-Jérôme Balard . In 1841 he turned to a career as a missionary, probably inspired by the news of the "martyrdom" of the French missionary and Saint Pierre Chanel in the South Seas. He attended the Jesuit college in Montpellier and was ordained a priest in 1843. He belonged to the Marist school brothers and worked with other members of the order in 1845 in the Solomon Islands as a missionary. The mission was not a lucky star, right at the beginning their bishop was killed by natives, so they went to a neighboring island, where they were embroiled in a feud between two neighboring tribes (they bought land on the border between the two tribes, but only had permission from one of the tribes). In 1847 the friars therefore went to Woodlark Island on the east coast of Papua New Guinea . Montrouzier also failed here as a missionary. The indigenous people were well-disposed, but he made the mistake of only supporting the converts of the tribe in a famine. In 1852 he left the island and went to Sydney, where he stayed for two years and met the naturalist family of the Macleays (including William Sharp Macleay ). Here he also wrote and published his treatise on the fauna and flora, indigenous peoples, and missionary history of Woodlark Island. He then worked as a clergyman in the French colony of New Caledonia. He was pastor (Curé) of Nouméa in New Caledonia and pastor of the island's prison. He never saw France again.

As a naturalist, he also collected while traveling in Australia, Tahiti , La Réunion and Madagascar . His Conchylia collection is in the Natural History Museum in Bordeaux, his botanical collection in the herbarium of the Universities of Lyon and Montpellier. His botanical collection was described by the botanist and politician Georges Beauvisage (1852–1925).

As an entomologist, he named the Urania butterfly Lyssa macleayi after William Sharp Macleay in 1856 and he first described the tree lobster . He sent his insect collections to London, Sydney, Paris, Brussels and Lyon, but his main collection intended for Montpellier was destroyed after an infestation with the cabinet beetle was discovered.

Honors

According to Montrouzier, the plant genus Montrouziera is Pancher ex Planch. & Triana from the Clusiaceae family.

Fonts

• Essai sur la faune de l'île de Woodlark ou Mouiou, Annales de la Société d'Agriculture de Lyon, 2, 7, 1855, pp. 1–114

literature

• Elizabeth Jefferys: Jean Xavier Hyacinthe Montrouzier: Devout missionary, driven naturalist . Sydney University Museum News, Issue 15, June 2008, pdf (Jefferys is curator at the Macleay Museum in Sydney)
• Georges Beauvisage: Révision de quelques genres de plantes neo-calédoniennes du RP Montrouzier . Annales de la Société botanique de Lyon, Volume 19, 1894
• Georges Beauvisage: Deuxième note sur l'herbier du RP Montrouzier, le genre Eutrecasteauxia Montr. Annales de la Société botanique de Lyon, Volume 12, 1897
• Georges Beauvisage: Notice sur le Révérend Père Xavier Montrouzier, botaniste en Nouvelle-Calédonie . Paris, J.-B. Baillière et fils, 1898
• Georges Beauvisage: Genera Montrouzierana Plantarum Novae Caledoniae . Annales de la Société botanique de Lyon, Volume 26, 1901
• Georges Beauvisage, André Guillaumin: Species Montrouzieranae seu enumeratio plantarum in Nova Caledonia terrisque adjacentibus a RP Montrouzier lectarum . Impr. De A. Rey, 1914
• HM Laracy, Xavier Montrouzier: A missionary in Melanesia. in: JW Davidson, D. Scarr (Eds.), Pacific Islands Portraits, Canberra, Australian National University Press, 1973, pp. 127-145.
• Patrick O'Reilly: Un missionnaire naturaliste: Xavier Montrouzier (1820-1897) . Revue d'Histoire des Missions, March 1931
• Pierre Jolivet: Xavier Montrouzier (1820-1897), the pioneer entomologist of New Caledonia, and the New Caledonian Chrysomelidae. Nouvelle revue d'entomologie, Volume 22, 2005, No. 2

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names - Extended Edition. Part I and II. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin , Freie Universität Berlin , Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-946292-26-5 doi: 10.3372 / epolist2018 .