In 1801, Louis Jean Pierre Vieillot described the Puerto Rican Emerald, a bird he named Trochilus magaeus in honor of René Maugé de Cely,
the first to make this bird known …. This naturalist, moved by his zeal for the subject, has just undertaken a new voyage with Captain Baudin to New Holland and the islands of the Pacific Ocean; ornithologists hope that he will return with notes about the birds of those regions, almost all of them still unknown — notes that will be the more precious for having been made on site by an enlightened observer. The Museum expects that his efforts will result in new, well-preserved skins as perfect as those he brought us from the Spanish island of Puerto Rico.
Vieillot, of course, could not know how that voyage would end for Maugé.
Lesson, writing of the bird in his Histoire naturelle des oiseaux-mouches, would (incorrectly) chastise his predecessor for not recognizing it as the same species already depicted and described under different names in Edwards, Brisson, and Buffon.
Nevertheless, says Lesson,
we have retained the name of Maugé for this species out of respect for the memory of that zealous and estimable traveler, who died the victim of his own zeal on the expedition to southern lands commanded by Baudin.
Two hundred twelve years ago today, on February 21, 1802, Maugé succumbed, barely 40, to dysentery.
