Bound for Jefferson in marbled calf, marbled end papers, sprinkled edges. Initialled by him at sigs. I and T. With the Library of Congress 1815 bookplate.

Between sig. Ee ₇ and Ee ₈ (pages 446 and 447) Jefferson has inserted another issue of Ee ₈, pages 447, 8, from a larger copy with the margin folded, and has written at the foot: Carton a mettre ici, sans cependant oter la feuille originale de 447. 448. This leaf is a different set-up from that in the book, it has the reading formation for fermentation in line 8, recto, and at the foot of the same page has Tome II and an asterisk.

Presentation copy from the author, who has written in red ink on the back of the half-title: For M( ^~ r) Jefferson, ministre Plenipot. of the United States of America from the Author.

The presentation was made when both Ingenhousz and Jefferson were in Paris. On May 11, 1789 Ingenhousz wrote to Jefferson: “I take the liberty to recommend to your care this three copies of the II volume of my work on vegetables, one for Dr. Franklin; one for the Philosophical Society and one for M. Sam. Vaughan junior. I begg the favour of you to accept the fourth as a remembrance of mine. An other volume will soon appear, it being allmost out of press.

"I should have pay’d you my respects a long while ago, but I was ill during the whole winter, and I am not yet strong enough to go far from my lodgings. Mr. Paradise told me today that you would be so good as to pack up these books among your own baggage, if I could send them immediately; but that I have time enough to write a letter, as you do not set out so soon your self . . .”

The book was originally written in English, and published in 1779. The translation is by the author.

Jefferson had expressed his views on the theories of Ingenhousz before the receipt of this French translation. On July 19, 1788 he wrote to the Rev. James Madison, President of William and Mary College: “ My last letter to you was of the 13 ^th. of August last. as you seem willing to accept of the crums of science on which we are subsisting here, it is with pleasure I continue to hand them on to you in proportion as they are dealt out . . . you know also that Doctor Ingenhousz had discovered, as he supposed, from experiment, that vegetation might be promoted by occasioning streams of the electrical fluid to pass through a plant, and that other Physicians had received & confirmed his theory. he now however retracts it, and finds, by more decisive experiments, that the electrical fluid can neither forward nor retard vegetation. uncorrected still of the rage of drawing general conclusions from partial & equivocal observations, he hazards the opinion that light promotes vegetation. I have heretofore supposed from observation that light affects the colour of living bodies, whether vegetable or animal; but that either the one or the other receive nutriment from that fluid must be permitted to be doubted of till better confirmed by observation. it is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong. in my mind, theories are more easily demolished than rebuilt . . . ”