Claude Casimir Gillet

After completing his classical studies, young Gillet, following the traditions of his father, an army veterinarian during the Empire and the first years of the Restoration, was decorated with the Legion of Honor Cross by Charles X in 1825 and entered the Alfort Veterinary School as a military student in 1823. From that moment on, he showed himself to be an obstinate worker, an ardent naturalist and a very skillful draftsman.

Called in 1830 to be part of the Algiers expedition, Gillet used the leisure time of his stay in North Africa, which lasted about four years, to research the fauna and flora of the Mediterranean region.

On his return to France, being in garrison in Lyon, he studied entomology with Etienne Mulsant, known for his works on the Beetles of France, and rendered him the services that were most indicated by his harvests, his observations and especially his drawings of insects. In Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Verdun, Sedan, Valenciennes, Thionville, where he lived successively, Gillet always knew how to make scientific work go hand in hand with the practice of his profession, for which he showed exemplary accuracy, as evidenced by four long reports on subjects of veterinary medicine written around this time, three of which earned him gold medals. In 1853, in recognition of his services, he was named, in 1853, principal veterinarian, a title that was rather difficult to deserve, since it was then the prerogative in France of only five incumbents.

In 1847, Gillet settled permanently in Alençon, where he lived for nearly fifty years, and was mainly involved in botany; Letellier, Prévost and Henri Beaudoin were his usual companions on excursions. It was there that he composed his two main works, La Nouvelle Flore Française and Les Champignons de France, which earned him his reputation. The first, which was published in 1861 with the collaboration of Magne, a professor at the School of Alfort and a member of the Academy of Medicine, gives succinct descriptions arranged in dichotomous tables of all the plants of France. This work being intended, in the thought of its authors, to serve as a manual for botanists and as a guide for students, the specific characteristics and details on the structure of plants are supplemented by drawings as remarkable for their accuracy as for the elegance of their execution. Indications on the properties of plants, their uses in medicine, veterinary hygiene, the arts and home economics made the New French Flora a useful book also for those who studied botany from an agricultural, medical or industrial point of view. It reached seven editions.