Description

BEAUTIFUL SOUVENIR HERBARIUM consisting of almost 200 specimens (twenty of which have been identified) collected between 1855 and 1859 in Ireland, Finland, the Alps glacier, Switzerland, the Jura, Scotland, Le Havre, England and Saint Gervais.

The herbarium includes seaweed, flowers, climbing plants and even a carnivorous butterwort. It is, however, a literary souvenir herbarium rather than a botanical herbarium: some of the specimens are arranged to spell out words ("Scotland", "Heaven") or to draw motifs: one page features a cross and halo design, while others show bouquets and wreaths: one wreath, in particular, is made up of flowers and leaves from the author's bridal bouquet and specimens gathered on his honeymoon. The author seems to attach as much importance to the place where the flowers were picked as to the plant itself: a sprig of ivy is captioned as coming from Alexandre Vinet's grave in the Clarens cemetery (a handwritten copy of a poem by Vinet completes the sheet). Another specimen was collected from the Tower of London, on the "walls of the bloody tower" ("walls of the Bloody tower).
In addition to the captions - written in English or French - and the poem by Vinet, the owner of the herbarium also copied the poem "The Use of Flowers"(Mary Howitt) and the poem by the Scotsman James Montgomery".If in the Field".

Dried flowers and leaves, presumably prepared for a composition, were tucked between two blank pages.

RARE.