Traité des arbres fruitiers

Henri Duhamel du Monceau (1700-82) was a justifiably celebrated Parisian polymath who gave up on formal university training to take lodgings near the Botanical Gardens, where he pursued his own plan of learning from the director and from other distinguished persons who gathered there. He cultivated trees on his own estates, authored a number of important books on topics as diverse as agronomy, marine architecture, and ichthyology, and was a member of all the important scientific academies. This treatise on fruit culture proved to be of considerable importance, and the plates were among the most beautiful botanical engravings of the period. The text begins by describing the appropriate methods for pruning and grafting fruit trees, and goes on to discuss the different varieties of individual fruits, including 58 types of pears. The engravings show uncommon consistency from beginning to end in how substantial and skillfully executed they are. The images are faithful to nature, thoughtfully designed, and so finely wrought as to appear luscious.