PALISSY Bernard Le Moyen de devenir riche, et la manière véritable, par laquelle tous les hommes de la France pourront apprendre à multiplier & augmenter leurs thresors & possessions. Avec plusieurs autres excellens secrets des choses naturelles…

Neville, II, pp. 250-251 : “very rare” ; Bolton, 717 ; Ferguson (Coll.), 509 ; Goldmiths’, P-127 ; Partington, II, 70 ; Wellcome, I, 4699 ; DSB, X, 280-281; not in Duveen and Ferguson.
First collected edition of Palissy’s two major books: the La Recepte Véritable (1st edition 1563) and Discours Admirables (1st edition 1580); the first editions are very rare and our 1636 edition is extremely uncommon.
“Very rare first collected edition of Palissy’s two major works. The first discusses a wide variety of topics, including agriculture, salts, springs, precious stone mines, and forestry. The second work is the second printing of the famous and important Discours (first edition, 1580)” (Neville).
This is a book full of interest. In Recepte véritable, “Palissy discussed a wide variety of topics, including agriculture (for which he proposed better methods for farming and for the use of fertilizers), geology (in which he touched upon the origin of salts, springs, precious stones, and rock formations), mines and forestry. He also suggested plans for an ideal garden, to be decorated with its earthenware and with biblical quotations… The second book, Discours admirables, probably incorporates Palissy’s Paris lectures. It, like the earlier works, deals with an impressive array of subjects: agriculture, alchemy, botany, ceramics, embalming, engineering, geology, hydrology, medicine, metallurgy, meteorology, mineralogy, paleontology, philosophy, physics, toxicology and zoology. The book is divided into several chapters, the first and longest of which is concerned with water. The others take up metals and their nature and generation; drugs; ice; different types of salts and their nature, effects, and methods of generation; characteristics of common and precious stones; clay and marl; and the potter’s art… Palissy’s view on hydrology and paleontology, as expressed in the Discours, are of particular interest. He was one of the few men of his century to have a correct notion of the origins of rivers and streams, and he stated it forcefully, denying categorically that rivers can have any source other than rainfall… Palissy discussed fossils extensively [and] was probably one of the first men in France to teach natural sciences from facts, specimens and demonstrations rather than hypotheses” (DSB)
“An early supporter of the infiltration theory, [Palissy] denied that rivers and streams had any source other than rainfall. He also recognised the relation between fossils and both living and extinct species, and was one of the first to hold a reasonably correct view of the process of petrification” (cf. Norman, n° 1629, for the edition 1580).
“Palissy shines as a close and accurate observer of natural objects, a man of eminent common sense, and an original and laborious experimenter” (Partington). Fine copy.

From the Library of Henri Bonasse with his bookplate.