Fine Printed Books & Manuscripts, Including Americana

Small 4to (216 x 159 mm). 68 full-page botanical etchings by Vallot, woodcut ornaments, initials, and title vignette. (Occasional toning and spotting.) Modern limp vellum, contemporary red staining to all edges. Provenance: ownership signature on title-page dated 1753.

FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST CANADIAN FLORA AND ONE OF THE EARLIEST NORTH AMERICAN HERBALS.

French physician Cornut never visited North America, but received plant specimens from the Robins family, who supervised the gardens of Henry IV and the garden of the Paris Faculty of Medicine, and the Morin family, who owned several Parisian commercial nurseries. Eighty-six different species are described, thirty native to north-eastern America, a number of them for the first time in any printed book. Among these is the Guernsey lily, so-named from its introduction into England some fifty years later, when specimens were found on the island following the wreck of a ship lost en route from Cape Town with bulbs among the cargo (Blunt, The Art of Botanical Illustration, 1950). Cornut also includes five South African bulb plants, again illustrated here for the first time. Bell C493; Blunt p.102; Brunet, Suppt., 316-17; Cleveland 190; Dionne II:99; European Americana 635/37; Gagnon II:519; Harrisse 59; Hunt 227; JCB II, p.255; Lande 157; Leclerc 705; Muller p. 36; Nissen BBI 406; Pritzel 1894; TPL 4663; Sabin 16809; Stafleu & Cowan 1233; Vlach 183; Wellcome 1612.