93 - VALMONT de BOMARE (Jacques Christophe).

VALMONT de BOMARE (Jacques Christophe). Universal Reasoned Dictionary of Natural History. Containing the History of Animals, Plants, and Minerals, and that of the Celestial Bodies, Meteors, and Other Principal Phenomena of Nature; with the History and Description of Simple Drugs...Plus a Table of Contents, etc. Paris, Brunet, 1775. 6 vols. in-4, marbled calfskin, ornate ribbed spine, gilt coat of arms in the center of the covers, double gilt fillet on the edges (contemporary binding). Third edition, illustrated with two engraved vignettes in the headband by Launay after Eisen, from the first work in which the science of nature was truly made accessible to everyone. Jacques-Christophe Valmont de Bomare (1731–1807), a naturalist and pharmacist, son of a lawyer at the Parliament of Normandy, studied anatomy under Lecat, the chief surgeon at the Hôtel-Dieu in Rouen, then devoted himself to pharmacy and chemistry before traveling throughout Europe to further his knowledge. As director of the Prince of Condé’s cabinet of physics and natural history in Chantilly, he published the first edition of this dictionary in 1764, which was regularly revised and expanded until the final edition of 1791. A fine copy bearing the coat of arms of Jérôme-Frédéric Bignon (1747–1784), a counselor in the Chamber of Petitions at the Palace, who later became the King’s librarian in 1772 and a State Councilor in 1775. (O.H.R. 872.) Some wear or old repairs to the bindings; a few internal defects, including some faint water stains, mainly in the corners; a worm-eaten area in the white margin at the beginning of Vol. 6.