Bory de Saint-Vincent, Jean-Baptiste Geneviève Marcellin (1778-1846); Patu de Rosemond. artist; Adam; Blondeau; Fortier; Dortez; B. Tardieu, engravers.

Voyage dans les quatres principales îles des mers d'Afrique pendant les années neuf et dix de la République (1801 et l802), avec l'histoire de la traversée du Capitaine Baudin jusqu'au Port-Louis de l'île Maurice. [Voyage to and travels through the four principal islands of the African seas : performed by order of the French government, during the years 1801 and 1802 : with a narrative of the passage of Captain Baudin to Port Louis in the Mauritius] First editions. 4 vols.

Paris: Chez F. Buisson, an XIII (1804). Original wraps and labels; backstrip mainly gone on the atlas.Very good......
3 volumes + atlas. xvi, 412; [4], 431; [4], 473. Text in French. (8vo) 20.5 x 13.3 cm (8x5¼"), . Atlas volume: 58 engraved plates (several folding) including maps, views, botanical and zoological illustrations. 36 x 28 cm (14 x 11").....OCLC Number / Unique Identifier: 2609762.....................................Bory de St-Vincent effectue un voyage de reconnaissance géographique à bord de la corvette Le Géographe. Il réside tout d'abord à l'île de France et ensuite à l'île de La Réunion du 12 août au 5 décembre 1801 avant de retourner en France. En 1804, il publie la relation de son séjour sous le titre "Voyage dans les quatre principales îles des mer d'Afrique, Fait par ordre du gouvernement pendant les années neuf et dix de la République (1801-1802)" imprimé par F. Buisson à Paris en 1804. Les trois volumes de texte sont accompagnés d'un atlas de 58 planches. Quand Bory de Saint-Vincent débarque à l'île de France en mars 1801, il offre ses services au gouverneur, le général Magallon de la Morlière, qui l'envoie à La Réunion. Bory de Saint-Vincent passe quelques mois à visiter l'île et dessine les sites les plus pittoresques de l'île..........

Harvard: The Friedman Lab.
Evolutionary History and
Plant Development:
Jean Baptiste Genevieve Marcellin Bory de Saint Vincent (Bory) was a vocal and important French supporter of materialist transformist thought in the early 19th century. In keeping with the biographical norm for many of the most influential 19th century naturalists, Bory served as the naturalist on board a naval expedition, later publishing a travel narrative, Voyage dans les quatre principals iles des mers d’Afrique (1804). Bory’s astonishment at the high levels of animal and plant endemism in the Mascarene Islands led him to muse on the possibility of an evolutionary world, asking “How did greenery come to shade an isolated volcano?” .................Much of what is known of Bory’s evolutionary thought is revealed in his entries in the multivolume Dictionnaire classique des sciences naturelles, which he edited in the 1820s. Bory was a frequent contributor to the Dictionnaire, writing on such topics as “Creation,” “Natural History,” “Geography,” “Man,” “Orang,” “Instinct,” and “Intelligence.” Of particular interest is the fact that Bory’s Dictionnaire is known to have been on board the Beagle with Charles Darwin......

Unlike other evolutionists such as Leopold von Buch (1825) and Charles Darwin who concluded that islands are colonized by long distant transport of species from neighboring mainlands, Bory explicitly rejected this possibility. Instead, he proposed a theory of multiple “modern creations” of life on isolated islands that involved instances of spontaneous generation from which more complex life forms then developed via Lamarckian transformism. Importantly, for Bory, the process of evolutionary innovation involved “individual aberrations” which become permanent and give rise to new species. Thus, variation is central to his evolutionary speculations. Bory also argued that evolutionary advances must take place within a strict order, or ecological succession, in which early-appearing “primitive species” prepare the ground for “newer” (more complex) species which rely on these pioneers for their own survival......

Bory’s transformist views did not go unnoticed. In an 1805 anonymous review of Voyage dans les quatre principals iles des mers d’Afrique published in the Edinburgh Review, the author describes Bory’s theory of multiple spontaneous creations as “unphilosophical” and “by no means countenanced by fact.” It is interesting to note that the subsequent 1805 English translation of Voyage (Voyage to, and travels through the four principle islands of the African seas) lacks many of the evolutionary bits of its original French . Item #51-6279

Price: $5,250.00