BOTANIK - Nature self-printing - [Bonnet, Marcellin & Fils.] [Facies Plantarum.] 88 plates in coloured naturalia with typographical (11 handwritten) labels. [Carcassonne, c. 1810.] 41.5 × 25 cm. Half leather binding, circa 1830, with some gilt to spine and marbled boards and endpapers (somewhat rubbed and bumped). Cf. Nissen BBI 204 - Fischer, Naturselbstdruck (in: Gutenberg-Jahrbuch 1933), no. 97 - Cave, Impressions of Nature, pp. 74/75 - Bonnet (1760 - ca. 1821) and his son produced one of the few French series of botanical nature prints, with hitherto unknown precision and aesthetics. "The work of the Bonnets is so scarce that it has never reached the attention it deserves from nature printing historians" (Cave). Only a few copies of two editions with printed text are known: 3 folio booklets, each with 15 plates and 2 pages of text, 80 plates in quarto with spine text (Nissen, Fischer). On 30 October 1989, Drouot (cat. no. 198) auctioned the only known set in the present version without any text, but with characteristic labels: 304 plates, which have since been preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale (RES ATLAS-S-50). A brief description with comparative illustrations can be found at https://cdn.essentiels.bnf.fr/uploads/media/attachment/20221122140619000000_rarete2.pdf. The essay by Pierre Julien, Un mystère: le Facies Plantarum, in: Revue d'Histoire de la Pharmacie 1990, pp. 156-158, is somewhat more detailed. Regarding the technique "inimitable et absolument fidèle" (Julien), Cave states: "The details of their process were kept secret, but seem to have involved printing in intaglio, with careful colouring of the imge of the leaves before printing." - Pre-bound: Jean-Henri Jaume de Saint-Hilaire. Mémoire sur les Indigofères du Bengale et de la Chine. With 5 coloured lithograph plates. [Paris 1826]. Folio. Pp. 5-12 (so complete). - The same. Mémoire sur la culture du Poivrier noir. With 2 coloured lithograph plates (bound after the 43rd natural plate). [Paris 1826]. 7 p. - Stafleu-C. 3307/08 - Occasional foxing, upper outer corner of the natural plate (25) broadly creased and more heavily stained, plate (35) with tidemark outside the image and without label, first text leaf of Sainte-Hilaire soiled. The natural proofs altogether fresh.