Scope and Contents
The collection consists of volumes five through fifteen of André Thouin's fifteen-volume Manuscrits agriculture botanique, documenting Thouin's work as an agriculture botanist and professor at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in France. Included are correspondence, reports, notes, lists and catalogs of plants, memoirs, printed materials, artwork, and other papers concerning botany, gardening, plant propagation, arboriculture, museum administration, and scientific exploration.
The volumes contain letters and reports by Thouin, other naturalists, and government officials respecting acclimatization of foreign plants, trees, spices, and cereals, importation of seeds to France, and horticulture in French colonial settlements in Guiana, Guadeloupe, and Senegal. Materials also document expeditions of Louis-Armand Chapelier to Mauritius and Madagascar, Nicholas Baudin to the West Indies, Jean-Baptiste Leschenault de la Tour to India, and George Samuel Perrottet to Indonesia and the Philippines, in addition to voyages of François André Michaux and his work on acclimatization of North American forest trees. Further included are manuscripts for Thouin's Description de l'École d'agriculture pratique du Muséum d'histoire naturelle and Monographie des greffes, as well as writings by botanists Jean-Nicolas Céré, Joseph-François Charpentier de Cossigny, and Pierre-Antoine Poiteau, and original drawings by painter Adèle Riché.
The collection also contains a manuscript index created by Thouin for the entire fifteen-volume collection. Dates in the titles are Thouin's own and may not reflect the actual date span of materials in each volume.
Dates
- 1795-1823
Creator
Conditions Governing Access
This collection is open for research.
Conditions Governing Use
The André Thouin Papers is the physical property of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Literary rights, including copyright, belong to the authors or their legal heirs and assigns. For further information, consult the appropriate curator.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Purchased from Gerald W. Cloud on the Edwin J. Beinecke Book Fund and Margaret Deakers and Eugene Mersereau Waith Fund, 2017.
Arrangement
Arranged in numerical order, with a manuscript index filed first.
Extent
2 Linear Feet (12 boxes)
Language of Materials
French
Catalog Record
A record for this collection is available in Orbis, the Yale University Library catalog
Persistent URL
Abstract
The collection consists of volumes five through fifteen of André Thouin's fifteen-volume Manuscrits Agriculture Botanique, documenting Thouin's work as an agriculture botanist and professor at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in France. Included are correspondence, reports, notes, lists and catalogs of plants, memoirs, printed materials, artwork, and other papers concerning botany, gardening, plant propagation, arboriculture, museum administration, and scientific exploration.
André Thouin (1747-1824)
André Thouin was a French botanist best known for his work in the field of agronomy. Thouin studied botany under Bernard de Jussieu. He was appointed chief gardener of the Jardin du Roi in Paris in 1764, and in 1793 became professor and chair of horticulture at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle. Thouin's major publications included Essai sur l'exposition et la division méthodique de l'économie rurale (1805), Description de l'École d'agriculture pratique du Muséum d'histoire naturelle (1807), Monographie des greffes (1821), and Cours de culture et de naturalisation des végétaux (1827). He also contributed to the Encyclopédie méthodique (1782-1832) and journals such as Annals and Memoirs of the Museum of Natural History, Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences, Agricultural Society, and Annals of French Agriculture. Shortly before his death, Thouin compiled his professional papers, which included correspondence, manuscripts, official reports, printed materials, and artwork dating from 1770 to 1823, in a fifteen-volume collection titled Manuscrits agriculture botanique.
Processing Information
Collections are processed to a variety of levels, depending on the work necessary to make them usable, their perceived research value, the availability of staff, competing priorities, and whether or not further accruals are expected. The library attempts to provide a basic level of preservation and access for all collections as they are acquired, and does more extensive processing of higher priority collections as time and resources permit.
Information included in the Description of Papers note and Collection Contents section is drawn from information supplied with the collection and from an initial survey of the contents. Folder titles appearing in the contents list below are based on those provided by the creator or previous custodian. Titles have not been verified against the contents of the folders in all cases.
This finding aid may be updated periodically to account for new acquisitions to the collection and/or revisions in arrangement and description.
- Acclimatization (Plants)
- Agronomy -- France
- Arboriculture -- France
- Baudin, Nicolas, 1754-1803
- Botanical illustrations
- Botanists
- Botanists -- France
- Botany -- France
- Botany -- Study and teaching
- Cayenne Island (French Guiana)
- Chapelier, Louis Armand, 1778-1806
- Charpentier de Cossigny, Joseph François, 1730-1809
- Céré, Jean-Nicolas, 1737-1810
- Engravings (prints) -- France -- 19th century
- France -- Colonies -- Africa
- France -- Colonies -- West Indies
- Gardening -- France
- Horticulture -- France
- Michaux, François André, 1770-1855
- Muséum national d'histoire naturelle (France)
- Natural history -- France -- 19th century
- Naturalists -- France
- Perrottet, G. S. (George Samuel), 1793-1870
- Poiteau, Pierre Antoine, 1766-1854
- Riché, A. (Adèle), 1791-1878
- Scientific expeditions -- India
- Scientific expeditions -- Islands of the Indian Ocean
- Scientific expeditions -- Southeast Asia
- Scientific expeditions -- West Indies, French
- Thouin, André, 1747-1824
- Title
- Guide to the André Thouin Papers
- Status
- Completed
- Author
- by Brooke McManus
- Date
- October 2021
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Part of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library Repository
Location
121 Wall Street
New Haven, CT 06511
Opening Hours
Access Information
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