Two ALS to Charles Louis L'Héritier de Brutelle.

£3,500 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

Two letters between preeminent botanists, concerning classifications of exotic specimens, Dryander’s work for the herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, all to the backdrop of the “glorious revolution” in France. Written in the first eighteen months of the abolition of the Ancien régime , these letters elegantly demonstrate the international exchanges of scientific knowledge, botanical specimens and seeds, alongside radical constitutional and democratic ideals. In the first letter, Dryander, who is sending his correspondent pages from his Kew catalogue, addresses various errors and disagreements, name checking his fellow botanists Daniel Solander and Sir Joseph Banks: “the origin of the blunder was, that I wrote this for the Herbarium, and that was the name Solander had given it, but as it is called in the supplement Chrysocoma sericia, I altered the trivial name to sericea, in printing it” and “I am decidedly of the opinion, that the Morus papyrifera is a new genus, but as I cannot persuade Sir Joseph that is so, I sent it yesterday to press under the old name, very much against my own opinion”. There follows a lengthy indecision over which class in which to put Heritiera, a tropical plant named for his correspondent, hesitating between the genus dioecia or polygamia, as well as an offer to send pressed specimens from Kew to Paris in exchange for those received from L’Héritier. In the letter written in 1790, Dryander again refers to the shipment of plates and a book

• Binding: Hardcover

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