Nouveau traité pour la culture des fleurs, qui enseigne la manière de les cultiver, multiplier, & les conserver selon leurs especes: avec leur proprietez merveilleuses, , & leurs vertues medicinales.

Paris, Charles de Sercy, 1678. Small 8vo. (7 ff), 199, (1) pp. Original mottled calf binding, spine goldtooled, edges sprinkled red. A good copy.

Second edition, the first was published in 1674. The author is named in the privilege at the end of the work. Pierre Morin (the younger or the third) was a gardener who was active in Paris between 1650 and 1690. He was the youngest of three brothers (Pierre - the elder, René and our Pierre - the younger). They inherit their taste for plants and flowers from their father. According to Wikipedia John Evelyn visits Morin's garden (father) in the Marais in Paris in 1644 and describes it: "The next morning, I was had by a friend to the garden of Monsieur Morine, who, from being an ordinary gardener, is become one of the most skilful and curious persons in France for his rare collection of shells, flowers, and insects. His garden is of an exact oval figure, planted with cypress, cut flat and set as even as a wall : the tulips, anemones, ranunculuses, crocuses, &c., are held to be of the rarest, and draw all the admirers of that kind to his house during the season. He lived in a kind of hermitage at one side of his garden, where his collection of porcelain and coral, whereof one is carved into a large crucifix, is much esteemed. He has also books of prints, by Albert [Durer], Van Leyden, Callot, &c. His collection of all sorts of insects, especially of butterflies, is most curious ; these he spreads and so medicates, that no corruption invading them, he keeps them in drawers, so placed as to represent a beautiful piece of tapestry. He showed me the remarks he had made on their propagation, which he promised to publish. Some of these, as also of his best flowers, he had caused to be painted in miniature by rare hands, and some in oil." The sons continue the family business. The present work opens with what the ideal gardener should be, then talks about the quality of the soil needed, when and how to plant and water the plants, how to get rid of insects. Most of the chapters described a single plant and how to take care of it.