DUCHESNE, Histoire Naturelle Des Fraisiers, 1766
DUCHESNE, Antoine Nicolas.
Histoire Naturelle Des Fraisiers.
Paris, Didot le jeune, 1766.
12mo (171x103 mm), xii-324-118-(2) pages and 1 plate. binding : XIXth century quarter sheep, flat spine. Caps worn.
First edition.
Monograph devoted to strawberries by Antoine Nicolas Duchesne (1747-1827) for which he proposes a genealogy of the different species. His name will remain attached to strawberries and the genus Duchesnea, plants of the Rosaceae family with a strawberry shape, was dedicated to him.
However, the cultivation and study of strawberries in Versailles also allowed him to document one of the first observations of mutation in plants giving a new species, the Versailles strawberry. In the second part of his work, he thus questions the formation of plant species, opposing Linnaeus's conception according to which new species are formed by hybridization and a slow drift from one species to another.
Duchesne thus observes the first evolutionary leap, a century before Darwin.
Our copy is enriched with two handwritten leaves of scholarly notes on strawberry species, inserted in the text.
references: Stafleu [Linnaeus and the linnaeans, p.280 : "[Duchesne] discovered in 1763 what appears to be one of the first spontaneous mutations observed on plants : a strawberry with simple leaves"], Lebrun ["La théorie de la mutation" : "Le premier qui fut scientifiquement constaté est celui du fraisier monophylle. Duchesne, botaniste et naturaliste, en a observé la naissance, dès 1763, dans des circonstances exceptionnelles de précision et d'exactitude"].
provenance: Bookplate from William Thomas Stearn (1911-2001) english botanist
Bookplate from Edmond Bonnet (1848-1922) french botanist.
Price : 950 €
