Agriculture Collection
From seed to plate. Varieties of pears and other fruits that can no longer be found today, drawn in oil, dictionaries with lyrical texts, technical books on forestry... Our libraries have been preserving such knowledge since the Age of Enlightenment.
In the former libraries of the Ministry of Agriculture, which Inrae inherited, there were reference works on agriculture, the oldest dating from the 17th century.
Agricultural trades, the study of plant growth, how to raise animals and their characteristics, how to diversify and fertilise crops... All these subjects were addressed on numerous occasions by authors who wished to disseminate the most advanced knowledge of their time.
As early as 1809, M. Pflûguer recommended that poultry [...] "should not be kept in a low, narrow and obscure place as is customary, but in a spacious, airy room exposed to the rising and midday sun, with suitable arrangements.
Moon phase gardening may be fashionable nowadays, but the lunar calendar was already recommended in 1678 in Pierre Morin's "Nouveau traité pour la culture des fleurs qui renseigne la manière de les cultiver, les multiplier et les conserver selon leurs espèces: avec leurs propriétés merveilleuses, et les vertus médicinales" [A new treatise for the cultivation of flowers which instructs the way to cultivate, multiply and preserve them according to their species: with their marvellous properties and medicinal virtues].
The collection of documents presented herein is currently composed of four subsets:
- old dictionaries and reference books on agriculture (17th to 19th centuries),
- books, most of them illustrated, about fruits and fruit trees (19th and 20th centuries),
- forestry sciences (19th and 20th centuries)
- economics and rural laws (19th and 20th centuries)
