BUCHOZ Le Grand Jardin de l’Univers, où se trouvent coloriées, les Plantes les plus Belles, les plus curieuses et les plus rares des quatre parties de la Terre, formant la continuation de l’Herbier de la Chine, de la Collection des Fleurs de la Chine et de l’Europe, des dons merveilleux dans le règne végétal et du jardin d’Eden. – [Suivi de] : Nouveau Traité physique et économique, par forme de dissertations, de toutes les plantes qui croissent sur la surface du globe…

I – Extremely rare first edition of this work, complete with its two parts and its 200 beautiful engraved and finely enhanced plates.

Dunthorne 67 ; Great Flower Books p. 81; Nissen BBI 289; Pritzel 1331; Stafleu 891.

An extremely rare work. Stafleu only mentions two institutional copies: the Natural History Museum in London, with a complete copy, and the Herbarium of the New York Botanical Garden, with a copy containing the first volume only.

(Dictionnaire bibliographique, historique, et critique des livres rares…, p. 70)

Pierre Joseph Buchoz (1731-1807), associate doctor at the Faculty and Royal College of Medicine in Nancy, physician-botanist to Mister, former physician to the late His Majesty the King of Poland and Monseigneur Comte d’Artois… published no fewer than 500 works, which have become very rare, including his famous Jardin d’Eden describing the plants acclimatized and cultivated in the Queen’s gardens at Trianon. From the Cape of Good Hope to Guyana, from China to Canada and from Africa to Siberia, travelers brought back seeds and plants that Richard’s gardeners, father and son, acclimatized in Trianon’s greenhouses, located on the site of today’s English garden at Versailles. Very close to the court, Buchoz reported on the scientific and botanical experiments of the princes he had the privilege of frequenting.

Pierre-Joseph Buchoz, from Metz, was a lawyer, then a doctor and demonstrator at the Royal College of Physicians in Nancy. He published works on natural history in the encyclopedic spirit of the time.

Today, his books are much sought-after for the beauty of the illuminated prints that accompany them.

Full-page engravings, in superb contemporary coloring. The superb 200 full-page plates in superb contemporary color, that make up this herbarium represent the most beautiful, curious and rare flowers from all four parts of the world.

II- Precious collection of 44 essays illustrated with 34 engraved and watercolored botanical plates.

Buchoz conceived his work as “the fourth part of the general and economic history of the three kingdoms of nature“, but at the same time, he sold the essays by the piece. Everyone could put together a copy to suit his or her taste, so no two are identical. The dissertations are devoted to a particular plant or to medical subjects, the last 5 in Latin.

This copy contains dissertations on Pain des hottentots, Douce-amère, Vigne, Vin, Ellébore, Tourette, Linen of Siberia, Calonne, Aristoloche, Breteuil, Besenval, Acacia de Constantinople, supplement to the dissertation on coffee, Aron or pied-de-veau, Quinquina, Albon, Trochereau, Lathrée, Willemetia, Digitale purpurine, Hélianthe, Toxicodendron, Buis, Ornithogalle, Narcisses, Dalechamp, Jacinths, terre-nois, châtaigne d’eau, trèfle d’eau, etc.

A superb copy of this precious herbarium, preserved in its uniform contemporary bindings in finely decorated red half-morocco.

No complete copy of Le Grand Jardin de l’Univers has been recorded on the public market since the beginning of the surveys in 1950.