Tableau encyclopédique et méthodique des trois règnes de la nature. Contenant l'helminthologie, ou les vers infusoires, les vers intestins, les vers mollusques, &c. Par M. Bruguière, Docteur en Médecine. Septième livraison

Bruguière, Jean-Guillaume

Editore: Panckoucke, Paris, 1791

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EX-COLL. DR. FREDERICK BAKER, CO-FOUNDER OF THE SAN DIEGO ZOO AND THE SCRIPPS INSTITUTE OF OCEANOGRAPHY. First edition. Paris: Panckoucke, 1791. Quarto (12 3/8" x 9", 311mm x 232mm). [Full collation available.] With 95 engraved plates, of which 5 (nos. 61, 69, 76, 86 and 92) are double-page. Collated complete against the BnF copy (FRBNF39093349). Bound in contemporary speckled paper boards backed in later calf. On the spine, five raised bands. Title gilt to dark calf in the second panel, date gilt to dark calf in the sixth. All edges of the text-block untrimmed. Bumped and rubbed, with some patches of wear at the extremities. An entirely unsophisticated example, with deckle edges to the text and plates. Even tanning throughout, with some peripheral oxidation. Repaired tear to the half-title at the gutter. The inner leaves of quire a jumping their sewing at the head. Blind stamp of the California Academy of Sciences to the title-leaf. Ink ownership signature of Dr. Fred Baker to the first page of the advertisement (p. i) flanked by the ink mechanical samps "NOV 30 1929" and "24942". Jean-Guillaume Bruguière (1749-1798) was a French naturalist with a specialism in invertebrate biology. At 24 he was the naturalist in the Kerguelen expedition to Antarctica in 1773, during which he named some 140 genera or species of marine life. The present work is a contribution -- section seven -- towards Charles Joseph Panckoucke's reorganization of Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie according to material published 1782-1832. Bruguière's contribution to the section on the three kingdoms (in addition to the Aristotelian plants and animals, the microscopic "protists" (now divided into prokaryotes and eukaryotes)) is on "worms" -- a depreciated class used by Linnaeus and Lamarck to refer to invertebrates without an exoskeleton -- in three categories: helminths (parasitic worms), intestina (including earthworms, roundworms, leeches) and mollusca (including squid, jellyfish and starfish). The result cuts obliquely to modern biology, but appeals to an earlier, intuitive sense of the natural world, viz. that tubular organisms have a commonality worth studying. The work, in parallel French and Latin in the best Linnaean model, uses the terse and precise language of description to flesh out the binomials. Jacques Renaud Benard (1731-1794) was a core engraver both for the Encyclopédie and for the Panckoucke revision; the term "direxit" indicates that he was at the head of a workshop rather than wielding the burin himself. Though conceived as part of a larger systematic treatment of the world, the present work must have been published in a limited run as a stand-alone work for those who either did not want (or want to wait for) or could not afford the full work. This seventh part has come to auction just three times (including the present volume), all in the current century. It is little surprise that one of these rare examples should have ended up in the hands of Frederick Baker (1854-1938), trained first as an engineer at Cornell and later as a medical doctor at the University of Michigan. Thus uniquely trained, Baker headed west to San Diego. With Harry Wegeforth, Baker founded the Zoological Society of San Diego, the forerunner of the San Diego Zoo, the most acclaimed zoo in the world. Perhaps less popular but no less important, Baker established the Marine Biological Institution with funds from Ellen Browning Scripps inter alia. Now the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, it is the leading academic institution in the country for the study of the seas. From the microscopy collection of Norman and Florence Blitch (Hindman Chicago 9 November 2021, lot 30). Nissen, ZBI 4621 (the Encyclopédie méthodique).

Codice articolo JLR0287

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• Titolo: Tableau encyclopédique et méthodique des trois règnes de la nature. Contenant l'helminthologie, ou les vers infusoires, les vers intestins, les vers mollusques, &c. Par M. Bruguière, Docteur en Médecine. Septième livraison
• Editore: Panckoucke, Paris
• Data di pubblicazione: 1791
• Rilegatura: Hardcover
• Edizione: First.
• Condizione: Very good
• Cataloghi dei venditori:
  • Maritime
  • Animal
  • Natural History