François-Louis Laporte, comte de Castelnau

Life

Born in London, Castelnau studied natural history in Paris. From 1837 to 1841, he traveled in the United States, Texas, and Canada. He visited Middle Florida from November 1837 until March 1838, publishing "Essai sur la Floride du Milieu" in 1843. In Canada, he studied the fauna of the Canadian lakes and the river systems of Upper and Lower Canada (roughly corresponding to the modern provinces of Ontario and Quebec) and of the United States.

Castelnau, a French savant, was sent by Louis Philippe, in 1843, with two botanists and a taxidermist, on an expedition to cross South America from Rio de Janeiro to Lima, following the watershed between the Amazon and La Plata river systems, and thence to Pará. He was gone for five years, with the expedition lasting into 1847. During the expedition, he also collected word lists of various indigenous South American languages, including Bororoan languages and Guachi.

In 1856-57, he visited the Cape of Good Hope, travelling as far east as Algoa Bay, and subsequently wrote a treatise on South African fish (1861).

He served as the French consul in Bahia in 1848; in Siam sometime between 1856 and 1858, and in Melbourne, Australia from 1864 to 1877.