a French Jesuit and geographer, was born at Istres, in Provence, about 1665, and was sent as a missionary to China about 1700. His scientific attainments gained him a place at court and the favor of the emperor Hang- he, who, in 1707, placed him at the head of a commission of Jesuits to make a survey and draw up a map of the Chinese empire. His labors were interrupted in 1724 when the emperor Yung-ching proscribed the Christian religion. He wrote a full history of his labors, a condensation of which may be found in Du Halde's Description de la Chine. He translated into Latin the Yih-kinq, edited by Julius Mohl (Stuttgart and Tubingen, 1834, 2 vols.). The MS. is in the National Library, Paris.