Louis Dufresne was one of the naturalists on board the Astrolabe, which accompanied by the Boussole, left Brest in August 1785 on a voyage of discovery.
The ships went first to Madeira and Tenerife, then to Trinidad and then to the coast of Brazil (including Santa Catarina Island).
Rounding Cape Horn the expedition landed at Concepción and on to the Sandwich Islands and then sailed north along the coast of north-west America to Alaska.
His work included the classification and arrangement of collections of invertebrates as well as vertebrates and he visited many parts of the world on behalf of the Museum.
Dufresne also maintained a private collection which by 1818 consisted of 1,600 bird specimens (on wooden supports and with both with Latin and French names), 800 world eggs, 4,000 shells, fossils, amphibians, corals and 12,000 insects.