Chapter XIII
Botany
Botany I rank with the most valuable sciences, whether we consider it’s subjects as furnishing the principal subsistence of
life to man & beast, delicious varieties for our tables, refreshments from our orchards, the adornments of our flower-borders,
shade and perfume of our groves, materials for our buildings, or medicaments for our bodies. to the gentleman it is certainly
more interesting than Mineralogy
(which I by no means however undervalue
) and is more at hand for his amusement. and to a country family it constitutes a great portion of their social entertainment.
no country gentleman should be without what amuses every step he takes into his fields.
letter from
Thomas Jefferson
to thomas cooper, october 7, 1814.
Botany is the school for patience, and it’s amateurs learn resignation from daily disappointments.
letter from
Thomas Jefferson
to madame de tessé, april 25, 1785.
1
Dioscorides.
Gr.
Lat.
p. 8
vo.
1815 Catalogue, page 47. no. 1, as above.
DIOSCORIDES,
Pedanius.
Dioscorides Libri octo
Græce et
Latine. Castigationes in eosdem libros [by Jacob Goupylius] . . .
Parisis: Impensis viduæ
Arnoldi Birkmanni,
1549.
8vo. 412 leaves; no copy was seen for collation.
Graesse II, 403.
Surgeon General’s Library Catalogue I, iii, 794.
Pritzel 2295.
Bradley I, 272.
Jefferson bought a copy of Dioscoride 1 vol. 8vo. from
Froullé on April 25, 1789, price
7.4. Entered on his undated manuscript catalogue, without price.
Pedanius Dioscorides of Anazarbos, 54-68, a Greek army surgeon in the service of Nero, was the originator of the materia medica. For several centuries
the best books in medical botany were virtually commentaries on the treatise of Dioscorides.
[1053]
2
Dioscoride. traduttione e discorsi del Matthioli.
fol. Ven.
1573.
1815 Catalogue, page 47. no. 32, as above.
DIOSCORIDES,
Pedanius.
Il Dioscoride dell’ eccellente Dottor P. A. Matthioli co’ suoi discorsi, con l’aggiunta del sesto libro de i rimedi di tutti i veleni di lui nuovamente tradotto & con dottissimi
discorsi per tutto commentato.
Venetiis,
1573.
Folio. illustrations; no copy was seen for collation.
This edition not in Haym, not in the
Surgeon General’s Library Catalogue and not in Pritzel.
Jefferson purchased a copy of an Italian Matthiolus Dioscorides from
Froullé on April 25, 1789, price
12 livres. At the same time he put in a bid of 10/- for the Italian edition of Dioscorides by Longiano, Venice, 1542, 8vo. lot no.
1105 in the Pinelli sale, April 30. On May 5 Mrs. Paradise wrote to report that the book would not be sold that year.
