France

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This rare catalogue of an exhibition in Paris in 1883 – held by only six libraries in the U.S. – provides descriptions and brief historical explanations of 102 antiquities from Mexico and the Yucatan that famed French archaeologist Désiré Charnay (1828-1915) acquired during an expedition of 1880-1882, including plans of newly discovered Toltec palaces, Aztec statues and funeral urns, and bas-reliefs found in Yucatan villages.

An early work in the French literature of hydraulic engineering. In the preface, Bouillet states that some of the machines he proposes were used in Holland and that some of his descriptions are translations of the Dutch. He describes methods of dredging rivers, constructing slipways and sluices, clearing ports and harbors, and maintaining river banks. He also discusses two techniques of raising a sunken ship and a way of blowing the deck of a ship with gunpowder to reveal cargo and then, salvaging it with diving bells made of copper.

This is a thesis presented for a medical degree at the University of Montpelier by Louis Théodore Frédéric Colladon, a student of the renowned botanist Augustin-Pyramus de Candolle. As was common in European universities at the time, it was de Candolle who wrote the detailed descriptions and classifications of plants in the genus Cassia, including numerous new species, based on his own herbarium and unpublished manuscripts. The student's role was that of explicating and defending the thesis.

René Primevère Lesson, having served as surgeon/pharmacist/naturalist on the round-the-world scientific voyage of the Coquille (1822-1825), subsequently published several works in ornithology and mammalogy. Les Trochilidées is the third and last volume of his classic work on hummingbirds, and its purchase completes the Smithsonian Libraries' set. Beautifully illustrated, the plates are color-printed and finished by hand to accompany the species descriptions and a general natural history of hummingbirds. This copy survives in sheets as issued, folded but un-cut and un-bound.