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RAUCH (François Antoine). Harmonie hydro-végétale et météoro…
See original version (French)
RAUCH (François Antoine). Harmonie hydro-végétale et météoro…
See original version (French)
Lot no. 84
RAUCH (François Antoine).
Harmonie hydro-végétale et météorologique, ou recherches Sur les moyens de recréer avec nos forêts la force des températures et la régularité des saisons, par des plantations.
Paris: Les frères Levrault, An x de la République [1802]. - 2 volumes in one in-8, 205 x 125 : frontispiece, (2 ff.), 8, 375 pp. ; frontispiece, (2 ff.), 299 pp. Bradel-style yellow shagreened paper boards, smooth spine, untrimmed (later boards).
First edition, dedicated to the First Consul, of this major work in the history of ecology in France, written by the Ponts-et-Chaussées engineer François Antoine Rauch (1762-1837), recognised as the founding father of French ecological thought.
"This work, meditated for the happiness of the countryside, embraces the correlations existing between mountains, forests and meteors; temperatures and seasons; the regeneration of springs, the repopulation of streams and rivers; the sanitation and cultivation of marshes; the fructification of major roads and pastoral routes; with some moral views on the honours to be paid to human nature in our funeral ceremonies" (title).
In his epistle, the author appeals to the First Consul and makes the following observation: "The arts, the sciences and invigorating commerce are coming alive with new life; but the great, imposing nature, the nurturing mother of all beings, has been weakened by a thousand centuries of mutilation and outrages. Our beautiful mountains have been stripped of the shining garments of the majestic forests that once covered them with their protective and silent shadows; the meteors, unleashed, now only announce themselves with devastation and sinister hissing sounds; with the departure of our ancient forests have disappeared those many children of nature, whose flight has tarnished the primitive radiance of creation; the Naiads of our fathers are dried up; the streams flow only languidly; the rivers are, in their sad nakedness, accompanied by withering marshy swaddling clothes; the urns of our old rivers no longer pour out their beautiful waters except intermittently, and our water channels, threatened with extinction, are forced to take away the water necessary for our crops; winds, formerly unknown, to which the deforestation of our mountains has given a modern existence, now ravage the richest basins of the republic; Every day, the earth loses one more element of its fertility; from its bosom, denatured by our continual outrages, come cohorts of diseases that come to wither the brilliant dream of life... "
This visionary text is illustrated in the present edition with two frontispieces engraved by Tardieu and Dupréel after a drawing by C. Monnet. The first "depicts the physicist showing, to the First Consul, our mountains crowned with cedars, pines, larches and firs, intermingled with our forest trees, reviving an extinct waterfall; sheltered fields and a landscape such as all points of France could, with well-directed work, present the gentle image of" (p. vij). The second frontispiece is captioned: "Elisée. Solemnity of the Tombs".
These two engravings were not included in the second edition of 1818.
A good copy in later hardback, well preserved despite a few traces of light wetness not serious.
See original version (French)
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