Catalogue des plantes recueillies aux environs de Tché-Fou par M. A.-A. Fauvel, déterminées par A. Franchet

Very rare first edition, printed in a very small number of copies, of this offprint from volume XXIV of the Mémoires de la Société nationale des sciences naturelles et mathématiques de Cherbourg.

Spine split with some loss, foxing and losses to the wrappers; internally in pleasing condition.

Suffering from poor eyesight, Albert-Auguste Fauvel (1851-1909) was forced to abandon the naval career he had hoped to pursue and instead turned to travel and natural-history exploration.

A speaker of Manchu, he entered the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service, where he served from 1872 to 1884. He studied the country’s fauna and flora as well as its economy. From 1884 onwards, he worked as an inspector for the Messageries maritimes and travelled extensively throughout Asia.

As for the botanist Adrien-René Franchet (1834-1900), attached to the herbarium of the Paris Muséum, Chinese plants were his particular speciality: he was responsible for studying the herbarium specimens sent back by missionary botanists working in China, including Fathers Armand David, Delavay, Farge, Soulié and Bodinier. In this way, he was able to name and classify more than 2,000 new plant species.