Canadensium Plantarum...Historia... Enchiridion Botanicum. by CORNUT, JACQUES PHILIPPE - 1635

Paris: S. le Moyne,, 1635. First edition. Full Leather. Very Good. 4to (236 x 180 mm) Modern pebble leather binding with new end papers. Bookplates of Ashton Allis on new front pastedown Edward Sanford Burgess present on recto of original free end paper, respectively. [16] 1-238 [2] [158 as 358, 220 as 196] pp+ 68 full-page, copper engraved plates, all botanical. Ink manuscript present on verso of front free end paper, inscriptions in ink on title page and numerous notations, mainly in the Enchiridion. The text block has usual browning from age, some minor fore edge damp staining away from text, and occasional light foxing. The plates have been attributed to Pierre Valet.

This is the first description of the Canadian Flora. Cornut was a French botanist and physician who never visited North America, but instead received the majority of his plant specimens from the Robins family, who supervised the gardens of Henry IV and the garden of the Paris Faculty of Medicine, and the Morin family, who owned several Parisian commercial nurseries. Over thirty species from eastern North America are here described and illustrated for the first time; the importance of which recognized by Linnaeus over a century later as he consulted this work in order to better understand the plants of that region. Cornut also included five South African bulb plants, again illustrated here for the first time. Provenance: Bookplates of Ashton Allis on new front pastedown Edward Sanford Burgess present on recto of original free end paper, respectively. Edward Sandford Burgess, the eldest child of Chalon and Emma Burgess, was born in Little Valley, New York on 19 January 1855 (d. 1928). Edward took an early interest in botany. By the age of sixteen, he had analyzed 280 plants near his home. By the age of nineteen, he had penned the Flora of Chautauqua County in which he presented the name and locality of every plant known to him (710) in that county. (JB, vol. 3, p. 28) This work was eventually published as the following: The Chautauqua flora: a catalogue of the plants of Chautauqua County, New York, native or naturalized; extending through the cryptogamous plants to the end of the Hepaticae (Clinton, New York, 1877). In 1895, Edward went to New York City to become the head of the Department of Biological Sciences at Hunter College. Eventually, he entered Columbia University where he received his Ph.D. in 1899. In addition, he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Science from his alma mater, Hamilton College, in 1904. Edward continued in his post at Hunter College until 1925. During this period, he published many works on botany. Among them were the following: "The Work of the Torrey Botanical Club," Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club 27 (1900): 552-8; "Plant Illustrations in the Middle Ages," Torreya 2 (1902): 60-1; "History of pre-Clusian botany in its relation to aster," Memoirs of the Torrey Botanical Club 10 (1902): 1-447; "Aster," in Flora of the Southeastern United States, J.K. Small (1903); "Species and variations of Biotian asters, with a discussion of variability in Aster," Memoirs of the Torrey Botanical Club 13 (1906): 1-419; and "A method of teaching economic botany," Memoirs of the Torrey Botanical Club 17 (1918): 52-5. (JB, vol. 3, pp. 50-4) As might be deduced from his list of publications, Edward was remembered most for his important work as a student of the genus Aster. In this group of extremely variable plants, he hoped to find the forces of evolution at work. Indeed, Edward discovered 84 species of Aster when only two to eleven had previously been known.(Univ. Oregon Special Collections) (Cleveland 190; Hunt 227; Nissen, BBI 406; Pritzel 1894; Stafleu & Cowan 1233)