Rare books, manuscripts and ephemera from five centuries

SONNINI, Charles Sigisbert, Etienne CHEVALIER and M. VIELLARD. VOCABULAIRE PORTATIF D’AGRICULTURE, d’Economie rurale et domestique, de médecine de l’homme et des animaux, de botanique, de chimie, de chasse, de pêche, et des autres sciences ou arts qui ont rapport a la culture des terres et a l’économie; dans lequel se trouve l’Explication claire et précise de tous les Termes qui ne sont pas d’un usage ordinaire, et qui sont employés dans les Livres modernes d’Agriculture et dans d’autres Livres. Ouvrage utile aux Cultivateurs, aux Habitans de la Campagne, et à tous ceux qui n’ont pas fait une étude particulière des Sciences et des Arts. A Paris: Chez François Buisson, 1810. £500

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FIRST EDITION. 8vo, pp. xiv, 463, [1] errata; some browning and spotting throughout; in contemporary blue wrappers, stiffened with reused leaves from an index; printed paper label on spine, slightly chipped; some light wear but still an attractive copy.

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First edition, uncommon, of this exhaustive dictionary of terms relating to agriculture, rural and domestic economy, medicine, botany, chemistry, hunting, and other land sciences.

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Compiled by three contributors to Rozier’s Nouveau Cours complet ou Dictionnaire universel d’Agriculture pratique, which had appeared the previous year, the Vocabulaire portatif offers a much more comprehensive overview of matters affecting rural life, in particular emphasising the ways in which scientific advances of the last couple of centuries could be applied to the practice of agriculture and animal husbandry, drawing on the work of Duhamel, Parmentier, Cadet-des-Vaux and others. However, these advances are of little use to the lay person who does not understand the terminology: ‘Puisque les Sciences ont éclairé de leur flambeau les différentes branches de l’Économie rurale, elles ont du nécessairement lui prêter une partie de leur langage et enrichir sa trop modeste Nomenclature de termes qui lui étaient inconnus… il est impossible, dans l’état actuel des Connaissances, de ne pas employer des expressions qui sortent du langage ordinaire…’ (p. ix).

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In order to address that, our dictionary offers a complete guide to the technical and scientific terms used throughout the rural economy, ranging from veterinary procedures to descriptions of plants, both cultivated and wild, from meteors to Linnean classification, from the clitoris (art. vet.) to aspects of the production of eaux-de-vie, and the use of vaccine against smallpox.

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Sonnini (1751-1812) the principal author, was best known as a naturalist, but is also remembered for his works on his travels in the Eastern Mediterranean, which were translated into English as Travels to Upper and Lower Egypt (1799) and Travels in Greece and Turkey (1801).

 

Outside France, OCLC records copies at Berkeley, the Lloyd Library, Ottawa, and the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. 

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