Bauhin, Caspar

Pinax [graece] Theatri Botanici ... sive Index in Theophrasti Dioscoridis Plinii et Botanicorum qui à Seculo scripserunt Opera. Basel: Ludwig König, 1623



4to (9⅝ x 6⅝ in.; 245 x 168 mm). Woodcut printer's device on title, plus 6 leaves of 19c manuscript with biographical notes on the author, an index of woodcuts in the following work and notes on the faculty of the Sorbonne including the chemist J.L. Gay-Lussac in the neat hand of Chanlatte; lightly browned throughout. Contemporary calf, spine gilt; rebacked, corners worn.



Bound with his:
Prodromos [graece] theatri botanici ... Frankfurt am Main: Paul Jakob for Johann Treudel, 1620



Woodcut title vignette, 138 column-width woodcuts; lightly browned throughout, woodcuts labelled in ink by Chanlatte.

Kaspar Bose (fl. 1680s, engraved armorial bookplate on title verso) — C. Chanlatte (19th-century signature on title) — P. Brunet, D.M. (inscription on front pastedown) — Horticultural Society of New York, bequest of Kenneth K. Mackenzie (bookplate dated October 1934)

Nissen BBI, 104 (Prodromus); PMM 121; Pritzel 509 & 507; J. Sachs, History of Botany (1890), p. 33; Stafleu & Cowan TL2, 367 & 366

First editions of both works.

Bauhin (1560-1624), professor of anatomy and botany at Basel, began a new era in botany, distinguishing it as a science in its own right and abandoning its herbal-medical associations, by creating a modern natural classification based on morphology. "The progress of botanical science ... reaches its highest point in the labours of Gaspard Bauhin, as regards both the naming and describing of the individual plants and their classification according to likeness of habit ... A still higher value must be set on the fact, that in Gaspard Bauhin the distinction between species and genus is fully and consciously carried out; every plant has with him a generic and specific name, and this binary nomenclature which Linnaeus is usually thought to have founded, is almost perfectly maintained by Bauhin, especially in the 'Pinax'" (Sachs).