ADANSON, M. (MICHEL). - ESTABLISHING A NATURAL SYSTEM OF PLANTS.

Familles des Plantes. I.- (II.) Partie. ( Contenant une Préface Historike sur l'état ancien & actuel de la Botanike, & une Théorie de cette Science). 2 Vols.

Paris, Vincent, 1763 (- 64).

8vo. Bound in their original state, 2 orig. red boards. Some wear and fading to spines. Some cracks to hinges on part one. Wear to spine ends. Handwritten titlelabels on spines. (4),CCCXXV,190;(2),640 pp., 1 large folded engraved plate. Internally clean, printed on good paper.

Scarce first edition of this taxonomic classic in which Adanson established a natural system of plants and challenged the validity of some opinions by Linnaeus and the whole theoretical position expressed by him

"In 1761 Adanson was elected a foreign member of the Royal Society of London, and in 1763-1764 he published Familles des plantes. In this book he proclaimed his contempt for "systems" and proposed a natural classification based upon all characters rather than upon a few arbitrarily selected ones, an attempt that brought him into conflict with Linnaeus. Recent historical studies have shown that Adanson’s views were shared by many Parisian botanists and that he was responsible for the maintenance of Joseph Tournefort’s system at the Jardin du Roi until 1774, when A. L.de Jussieu’s system was adopted. Adanson owed much to Bernard de Jussieu’s plant families as they were developed in his manuscript plan for the Trianon garden in which he arranged the plants in beds in an order corresponding to his system of classification. He soon recognized that his Familles des plantes was only an outline of his general conception, and in 1769 he prepared a new edition that was never published." (DSB).

Stafleu & Cowan; 26. - Hunt; 577.

Order-nr.: 50631