18th century

Katsukawa Shunshō Nikuhitsu Shunkyū Higi Zukan

Shunkyū Higi Zukan [勝川春章肉筆春宮秘戯図巻 (Secret erotic play)] is a set of erotic paintings produced by Katsushika Shunshō (1726-1793), one of the most important ukiyo-e painters of the Edo period (1600-1868).

Papillons d'Europe

Ernst & Engramelle's work on the butterflies of Europe was originally issued by subscription in 29 fascicles over 13 years. The Cullman Library holds the complete work: eight volumes of text (bound as three) with 342 meticulously and beautifully hand-colored plates in three separate volumes (Paris: Delaguette etc., 1779-1792).

Recueil de Planches, Sur les Sciences, les Arts Libéraux, et les Arts Méchaniques. Encyclopédie - t.2

The Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, par une Société de Gens de lettres was published under the direction of Diderot and d'Alembert, with 17 volumes of text and 11 volumes of plates between 1751 and 1772. Containing 74,000 articles written by more than 130 contributors, the Encyclopédie was a massive reference work for the arts and sciences, as well as a machine de guerre which served to propagate the ideas of the French Enlightenment. The impact of the Encyclopédie was enormous.

Recueil de Planches, Sur les Sciences, les Arts Libéraux, et les Arts Méchaniques. Encyclopédie - t.3

The Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, par une Société de Gens de lettres was published under the direction of Diderot and d'Alembert, with 17 volumes of text and 11 volumes of plates between 1751 and 1772. Containing 74,000 articles written by more than 130 contributors, the Encyclopédie was a massive reference work for the arts and sciences, as well as a machine de guerre which served to propagate the ideas of the French Enlightenment. The impact of the Encyclopédie was enormous.

Recueil de Planches, Sur les Sciences, les Arts Libéraux, et les Arts Méchaniques. Encyclopédie - t.4

The Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, par une Société de Gens de lettres was published under the direction of Diderot and d'Alembert, with 17 volumes of text and 11 volumes of plates between 1751 and 1772. Containing 74,000 articles written by more than 130 contributors, the Encyclopédie was a massive reference work for the arts and sciences, as well as a machine de guerre which served to propagate the ideas of the French Enlightenment. The impact of the Encyclopédie was enormous.

Recueil de Planches, Sur les Sciences, les Arts Libéraux, et les Arts Méchaniques. Encyclopédie - t.5

The Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, par une Société de Gens de lettres was published under the direction of Diderot and d'Alembert, with 17 volumes of text and 11 volumes of plates between 1751 and 1772. Containing 74,000 articles written by more than 130 contributors, the Encyclopédie was a massive reference work for the arts and sciences, as well as a machine de guerre which served to propagate the ideas of the French Enlightenment. The impact of the Encyclopédie was enormous.

Recueil de Planches, Sur les Sciences, les Arts Libéraux, et les Arts Méchaniques. Encyclopédie - t.9

The Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, par une Société de Gens de lettres was published under the direction of Diderot and d'Alembert, with 17 volumes of text and 11 volumes of plates between 1751 and 1772. Containing 74,000 articles written by more than 130 contributors, the Encyclopédie was a massive reference work for the arts and sciences, as well as a machine de guerre which served to propagate the ideas of the French Enlightenment. The impact of the Encyclopédie was enormous.

Recueil de Planches, Sur les Sciences, les Arts Libéraux, et les Arts Méchaniques. Encyclopédie - t.6

The Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, par une Société de Gens de lettres was published under the direction of Diderot and d'Alembert, with 17 volumes of text and 11 volumes of plates between 1751 and 1772. Containing 74,000 articles written by more than 130 contributors, the Encyclopédie was a massive reference work for the arts and sciences, as well as a machine de guerre which served to propagate the ideas of the French Enlightenment. The impact of the Encyclopédie was enormous.

Recueil de Planches, Sur les Sciences, les Arts Libéraux, et les Arts Méchaniques. Encyclopédie - t.7

The Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, par une Société de Gens de lettres was published under the direction of Diderot and d'Alembert, with 17 volumes of text and 11 volumes of plates between 1751 and 1772. Containing 74,000 articles written by more than 130 contributors, the Encyclopédie was a massive reference work for the arts and sciences, as well as a machine de guerre which served to propagate the ideas of the French Enlightenment. The impact of the Encyclopédie was enormous.

Recueil de Planches, Sur les Sciences, les Arts Libéraux, et les Arts Méchaniques. Encyclopédie - t.8

The Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, par une Société de Gens de lettres was published under the direction of Diderot and d'Alembert, with 17 volumes of text and 11 volumes of plates between 1751 and 1772. Containing 74,000 articles written by more than 130 contributors, the Encyclopédie was a massive reference work for the arts and sciences, as well as a machine de guerre which served to propagate the ideas of the French Enlightenment. The impact of the Encyclopédie was enormous.

Recueil de Planches, Sur les Sciences, les Arts Libéraux, et les Arts Méchaniques. Encyclopédie - t.10

The Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, par une Société de Gens de lettres was published under the direction of Diderot and d'Alembert, with 17 volumes of text and 11 volumes of plates between 1751 and 1772. Containing 74,000 articles written by more than 130 contributors, the Encyclopédie was a massive reference work for the arts and sciences, as well as a machine de guerre which served to propagate the ideas of the French Enlightenment. The impact of the Encyclopédie was enormous.

Discours Sur la Structure des Fleurs, Leurs Differences et l'Usage de Leurs Parties....

This short publication by a little-known botanist gave Linnaeus the diagnostic tools and the anatomical terminology for his sexual system of classifying plants. After studying botany under Tournefort at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, Vaillant (1669-1722) established a herbarium there and showed such talent and dedication that over time he rose through the ranks to become the director.

Resa uti Europa, Africa, Asia, foerröttad åren 1770-1779

Linnaeus's greatest disciple and successor, Carl Peter Thunberg (1743-1838) made major contributions to the botany of South Africa and Japan as a result of his travels described in this book. The Smithsonian Libraries holds many of his specifically botanical publications, as well as an English translation of this work (3rd ed., 1795-1796; in the Russell E. Train Africana collection). Thunberg's narrative covers his travels in southern Europe, the Cape of Good Hope, the South African interior, Java, Japan, and Ceylon, and holds great ethnographical interest.

Synopsis Methodica Stirpium Britannicarum

Englishman John Ray (1627-1705) is considered by many to be the greatest naturalist of his day, and his works in the fields of botany and zoology are classics of pre-Linnean classification. The Synopsis methodica stirpium brittannicarum, in particular, was the standard botanical authority for many years; it is considered remarkably accurate in its coverage and descriptions of the British flora, and the classification follows a natural sequence, replacing earlier methods with the concept of grouping plants by direct observation of their similarities and differences.

Psyche : Figures of Non-Descript Lepidopterous Insects, or Rare Moths and Butterflies From Different Parts of the World

Best known as a botanist and conchologist, Thomas Martyn (1735-1825) also published works on entomology. His Psyche is a famous — and famously rare — work, once thought to exist in only 10 copies, and while that number has been expanded to about 18, they are all different in the number of plates and pages of text (if any) that they comprise. Only 7 copies are known in U.S. libraries, and some of those are incomplete. This one, too, is a partial copy: 5 parts, with their original printed wrappers and 9 hand-colored plates (pt.1 text and all of pt.2 in facsimile).

Six Discourses

Sir John Pringle, 1st Baronet, PRS (1707-1782) was a Scottish physician who has been called the "father of military medicine," although Ambroise Paré (1510-1590) and Jonathan Letterman (1824-1872) have also been accorded this sobriquet. After finishing his studies, Pringle settled in Edinburgh at first as a physician, but between 1733 and 1744 was also Professor of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh University. In 1742 he became physician to the Earl of Stair, then commanding the British army in Flanders.

The Language of Botany

Thomas Martyn was Regius Professor of Botany at Cambridge University and an early adopter of Linnaean classification and nomenclature, which he promulgated in his public lectures. In this work, based on a paper given to the Linnean Society in 1789, he defines hundreds of Linnaean terms and clarifies conceptual aspects of the Linnaean system, which is the foundation for the work of modern researchers at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

Trattato della Misura delle Fabbriche

A civil engineer, Alberti worked on projects in Umbria and Emilia and became famous for his two works on the mathematics of engineering, of which this is one. The book is an extensive and thorough guide to stereometry. It demonstrates the techniques for calculating volumes of all kinds of spaces, structures, and vaults. It is illustrated in detail with a fine portrait of Alberti.

Podrovnoe Opisanīe Parovoĭ Mashiny

An early Russian technical book describing an atmospheric steam engine for pumping water. The title indicates that it is based upon the one devised by the Englishman T. Savery. Thomas Savery (1650?-1715), the English military engineer, patented the first commercially successful atmospheric steam engine in 1698. This book was published by the Army Technical Academy. Following the Napoleonic Wars, the Russian Army continued to play a role in encouraging technical innovations (as well as in harboring political liberals).

Svenska Spindlar

A member of the minor Swedish nobility, Clerck was a friend and correspondent of Linnaeus. He studied spiders, publishing his identifications and analyses in the present work along with observations on their behavior. In Swedish and Latin, it describes and illustrates 70 species and is a classic of arachnology; indeed, it is the founding text on spider nomenclature.

The Principles of Natural Philosophy

An enquiry and attack on the scientific principles of Hobbes, Locke, Spinoza, and Descartes. Almost half of the book is devoted to light and colors, including the phenomenon of the rainbow, with a large chapter on sound. Green dismisses the Cartesian theory of light in favor of Newton's, which he refers to as "the Modern Philosophy."

All the World's Birds

Originally published from 1749 to 1778, Buffon's Histoire naturelle générale et particulière included 9 volumes on birds, which were re-issued separately with superb hand-colored engravings by Martinet. The Cullman Library holds the complete original work by Buffon and a complete set of Martinet's illustrations (without the text). This book reproduces all 1008 plates, providing modern scientific names and English translations from Buffon's text.

A Treatise on Diamonds and Precious Stones

John Mawe (1766-1829) first set out on a career at sea, but after the merchant ship he was in foundered on a reef near Mozambique, he concluded that a sea-faring life was too hazardous and turned to selling the shells, minerals, and other natural-history specimens that he had begun collecting in his travels. He became one of the leading dealers in the booming trade of specimens for curiosity cabinets and scholarly collections throughout Europe.

Beschreibung Eines Ellipsograph

A superb monograph on the theory, construction and use of a mechanical drawing device to describe ellipses. The author, Georg Friedrich Parrot (1767 – 1852) was a German scientist, the first rector of the Imperial University of Dorpat (University of Tartu), being elected by the University Council consisting of all chaired professors. In this capacity, Parrot skillfully fought for the academic freedom and the self-government of the university, protecting her from the political pressure of Baltic German barons who had been given the right to autonomously govern in the Baltic provinces.

Beschreibung Einer Elektrisir-Maschine und Deren Gebrauch

Second, enlarged and corrected edition of this very scarce tract on the author's electricity machine handsomely illustrated on the folding plates. This machine was used in physics experiments and occasionally for medicinal purposes. Schmidt (1740-1811) is identified as the "court instrument maker" and wrote several additional works on electricity.

A Large Dictionary English and Dutch

The Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Library of Natural History has been building a collection of foreign language dictionaries from the same time periods as the books in our rare collections (16th through 19th centuries) so that researchers can consult contemporary sources when reading and translating the books. Latin, Dutch, German, French, and Spanish have been the top priorities, with Swedish, Portuguese, and Italian as a second-tier. For 18th century Dutch, we recently bought the 4th edition of Sewel's English-Dutch dictionary, first published in 1691.

De Natura et Veritate Methodi Fluxionum

A scarce copy of Daniel Melander's (1726-1810) dissertation on the rival claims and speculations that led to a concrete understanding of the nature and beauty of calculus. Melander was a student at Uppsala and later became lecturer in physics and professor of astronomy. In 1782 he moved to Stockholm, where he became one of the leading scientists in Sweden, with a major worldwide correspondence.

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