Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire des Insectes

Description:

René-Antoine Ferchault Reaumur (1683-1757) was a French entomologist who also had a wide range of scientific interests. His name is associated with a temperature scale (Réaumur temperature scale) that he introduced, while his biological contribution rests on his monumental work 'Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire des insectes' (six volumes, 1734–1742). In this work Reaumur made early ecological and biodiversity observations about insects, noting that the number of insects is prodigious. Of the twelve to thirteen thousand plants known to botanists in his day, he observed that each plant ‘has its own special insect’ and that some like the oak supports hundreds of different species of insects, and that these are the prey of particular predators.

Tome I: Sur les chenilles et sur les papillons; Tome II: Suite de l'histoire des chenilles et des papillons; et l'histoire des insectes ennemis des chenilles; Tome III: Histoire des vers mineurs des feuilles, des teignes, des fausses teignes, des pucerons, des ennemis des pucerons, des faux pucerons, et l'histoire des galles des plantes, et de leurs insectes; Tome IV: Histoire des gallinsectes, des progallinsectes, et des mouches à deux ailes; Tome V: Suite de l'histoire des mouches à deux ailes, et l'histoire de plusieurs mouches à quatre ailes; savoir, des mouches à scie, des cigales, et des abeilles; Tome VI: Suite de l'histoire des mouches à quatre ailes, avec un supplément à celle des mouches à deux ailes.

Nissen ZBI, 3315.

Condition

Cont. mottled calf, raised bands, gilt tooling to compartments; marbled endpapers + edges. Some rubbing/scuffing/surface wear to covers, some wear/chipping to spine ends, a few joints partly cracked, but firm. Contents very crisp and clean. Vg set.

Provenance: Engraved book-plates with signature of 'M. Raymond de Pringy, Secretaire du Roy' in ink beneath (book-plate removed from 2 volumes). Raymond de Pringy was secretary to the French king, Louis XV (1710-1774), known as Louis the Beloved.