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“B” is for Bosc, Louis Augustin Guillaume (1759-1828)

“B” is for Bosc, Louis Augustin Guillaume (1759-1828). Naturalist. Born in Paris, France Bosc attended natural history lectures at the Garden of the King where he met prominent French naturalists and became a friend of the botanist-horticulturist Andre Michaux. Wishing to escape the turmoil of post-revolutionary France, Bosc decided to visit Michaux in Charleston, with the hopes of collecting natural history material while awaiting the possibility of appointment to a consular position in the United States. With no prospect of working with Michaux, Bosc set about collecting natural history specimens that he sent to his colleagues at the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris. Louis Augustin Guillame Bosc was especially interested in invertebrates and the names of fourteen new species that he described from South Carolina are still valid today, among them the familiar fiddler crab of coastal salt marshes.

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Dr. Walter Edgar has two programs on South Carolina Public Radio: Walter Edgar's Journal, and South Carolina from A to Z. Dr. Edgar received his B.A. degree from Davidson College in 1965 and his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 1969. After two years in the army (including a tour of duty in Vietnam), he returned to USC as a post-doctoral fellow of the National Archives, assigned to the Papers of Henry Laurens.