Claude Gay, a French traveller and naturalist, born at Draguignan, March 18,1800. After having studied the natural sciences at Paris and travelled in Greece and the East, he went to Chili in 1828 and studied the botany, zoology, and meteorology of that country, and also of parts of Peru, Brazil, and Buenos Ayres. After his return to Paris in 1842 he published in Spanish, at the expense of the Chilian government, his great work, the Historia fisica y Politica de Chile (Paris, 1843-51), in 24 vols., besides an atlas in 2 large 4to vols., composed of 315 plates.