BERGERET, JEAN PIERRE. Phytonomatotechnie universelle, c'est-a-dire l'art de donner aux plantes des noms tirés de leur charactères; nouveau systême au moyen duquel on peut de soi-même, sans le secours d'aucun livre, nommer toutes les plantes qui croissent sur la surface de notre globe. Paris: chez l'auteur...Didot le jeune...Poisson, 1783-1784 [-1786].
3 vols., folio, 415 x 265 mm., original blue paper over pasteobards, uncut, spines broken, board edges and corners worn, vol. III lacks title, the last 20 plates, text pages 153-176 and the folding table; occasional dampstaining in the margins, vol. II plate 30 torn, vol. II plate 37 remargined.
FIRST EDITION, 300 engraved plates only (of 320, lacks the final 20 plates), printed variously in green, red or brown ink and colored by hand, by and after [G. P.?] Poisson.
Very rare. The 1783 prospectus announced the publication of 100 plain and 100 colored copies. Bergeret devised a system of naming plants with a combination of letters each of which would denote a particular characteristic. This mnemonic system, typical of the period of the Enlightenment, would allow universal recognition and would establish a universal nomenclature without recourse to botanical texts. As Stafleu remarks: "The 'noms tirés de leurs caractères'...are formulae and cannnot be considered as names under the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature...the plants are anyhow regularly described under the 'normal' Linnaean names."
Great Flower Books, p. 50; Nissen 145; Stafleu & Cowan TL2 456.
Provenance: Robert de Belder (sale, Sotheby's London, 27 April 1987, lot 21, mis-catalogued as complete with folding table and 320 plates).