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La Ménagerie du Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, ou description et histoire des animaux qui y vivent ou qui y ont vécu.
Paris
Miger, Patris, Grandcher, Dentu
an X, 1801
Size :
52 x 33,5 cm
Color :
NB
Condition :
Bon
Technique :
Copper engraving
Reference : 490-1
€6,000.00
Description
In-folio (52 x 33.5 cm); half-basin, smooth spine decorated and titled in gilt (period binding) (rubbing and stains, corners worn). Title, 9 pp. Introduction, 162 pp, 39 plates, 1 index leaf.
An in-depth study of the various species of animals in the zoo of the National Museum of Natural History.
This scholarly work is composed of 36 articles devoted to one animal species, each with its own pagination. Each description is accompanied by an engraved plate, sometimes two. Thirty-one of these descriptions are by Georges Cuvier, three by Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and two by Bernard Germain-Etienne de la Ville, comte de Lacépède. In total, the illustration of the book includes 39 prints drawn from nature by Nicolas Maréchal (32), Pierre-François de Wailly (4) and Nicolas Huet (1), and engraved on copper by Simon-Charles Miger. Copies of this book are very rarely found complete. The present copy does not include the tiger plate (only its description), but includes the very rare RHESUS plate NOT listed in the table (and never accompanied by text).
Created in 1793, the Menagerie of the Jardin des Plantes became the Menagerie of the Museum of Natural History when it was inaugurated one year later. The scientific importance of zoology carried by the famous zoologists of the time Lacépède, Cuvier and Geoffroy contributed to the growing interest for this science.
MARECHAL, [LACEPEDE et CUVIER]
Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), a famous French naturalist, was admitted to the newly created Museum of Natural History. A member of the Academy of Sciences of the Institute of France since 1796, he published his lectures on the classification of animals in his work Tableau élémentaire de l'histoire naturelle des animaux published in Paris by Baudouin in Year 6 (1797-98), a work that made him famous. In 1806, he became a member of the Royal Society of London.
Bernard-Germain-Etienne de la Ville, Comte de Lacépède (1756-1825), was a famous French naturalist and writer. He was noticed by Buffon, who made him a member of the natural history cabinet of the King's Garden, and he was elected to the chair previously occupied by Daubenton. He collaborated on Buffon's Natural History, which he was asked to write several passages on, and published his Histoire naturelle des quadrupèdes ovipares et des serpens 1788-1789 [2 vols. During the Terror, he resigned, leaving his professorship to his friend Etienne-Louis Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. Back in Paris in 1795, the natural history cabinet of the King's Garden, then restructured as the National Museum of Natural History, created for him the chair of ichthyology and herpetology. He published the last two parts of Buffon's Histoire naturelle with Histoire naturelle des poissons 1798-1803 [5 vols.] and Histoire naturelle des cétacées 1804 [1 vol.)
Etienne-Louis Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772-1844) was a famous French naturalist. In 1793, he succeeded Lacépède at the Cabinet d'histoire naturelle, and a few months later became one of the twelve professors of the new Museum national d'Histoire naturelle and held the chair of zoology. The same year, he organized the menagerie of the Museum, and the following year he collaborated with Georges Cuvier, publishing together several natural history memoirs. In 1798, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire was part of the scientific commission that accompanied Bonaparte to Egypt. He studied fishes in particular. In spite of the French capitulation in August 1801, he succeeded in bringing back the collections that he had worked so hard to build up and it took him several years to make an inventory of them. He entered the Academy of Sciences in 1807. He is the author of important works of comparative anatomy of vertebrates.
