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BOTANY WITHOUT BORDERS
BELON, Pierre / CLUSIUS, Charles. . De neglecta Stirpium cultura. Antwerp, Christopher Plantin, 1589.
8vo., 78 (ie. 87) pp. Bound in modern half calf; toned; final blank with a two-page outline of the topics treated in a contemporary hand. Overall good copy.
$1,650 Rare first Latin edition of Belon's Les remonstrances sur le defaut du labour et culture des plantes (1558), as translated by Charles Clusius, a defense of the propagation of foreign trees and other plants in France. Many of Belon's contemporaries doubted the feasibility of foreign imports, and the author accordingly devotes considerable space to combatting horticultural xenophobia.
To bolster his argument, Belon surveys both the botanical literature of his day as well as noting the successful propagation in contemporary Italian gardens of foreign species: the gardens of the Pontif, of Cardinal Bembo in Pavia, and those of Cosimo de Medici at Florence and Pisa are the most frequently cited. He treats species from Greece, Asia, Egypt, Arabia -- all of which he visited himself in an arduous journey made in 1546-50 -- as well as from Europe and the Americas. He exhorts the College of Medicine in Paris to take the lead by establishing a model experimental garden, emphasizing the benefit of pharmacoepedic applications.
Pierre Belon (1517-1564) was one of the first explorer-naturalists. His scientific interests included anatomy as well as botany, and he achieved distinction in both: called by Pavlov "the prophet of comparative anatomy," he is generally considered the originator of that field. In botany, he also recorded and depicted for the first time several plants from the Near East.
* DSB II. 595-96; Pritzel #609; Bibl.Belgica I.222.
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