Catalogue d'une tres-belle collection des objets de troise regnes de la nature...

Catalogue d'une tres-belle collection des objets de troise regnes de la nature...
Adoption Amount: $5,500
Category: Build and Access the Collection
Location: Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Library of Natural History

Verzeichnis einer sehr schönen, aus mehr als neun tausend Stücken bestehenden Naturalien-Sam[m]lung aus den drey Reichen der Natur

[Frankfurt am Main?: s.n.], 1777.

This is the auction catalogue of one of the most impressive private collections of natural-history specimens ever formed. Pasquay (1719-77) was a physician in Frankfurt and privy councilor of Anhalt-Dessau; he formed the collection over many years, assembling more than 9000 specimens of minerals, shells, plants, woods, and animals, as well as 100 scientific instruments. Private collections like Pasquay's were crucial to taxonomic and systematic research in the centuries before university collections and national museums became the large and welcoming resources that they are today. Referred to in the scientific publications of their day, many private collections are known in detail only through their auction/sale catalogues, which therefore can be crucial for tracking the provenance and modern location of cited specimens, including on occasion the types for new species names. Smithsonian Libraries holds numerous auction catalogues that were purchased and donated by the Institution's researchers and is the only library in North America to hold Pasquay's catalogue.

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