GOÜAN, Antoine

Second compartment reads: Goüan Histor Des Poissons. Other compartments with elaborately gilt decorations. All edges red. Binding slightly rubbed. Internally renewed with contemporary pastedowns front and endpapers. Illustrations from Goúan and engraved by Weiss. Goüan (1733-1821), a professor of botany at Montpellier, was one of the first proponents in France of Linnaeus' methods and nomenclature. As a strict follower of the Linnaean school he only paid attention to exterior characters. For example he seriously maitained that these animals possessed neither an internal nor an external ear. We should note , however, that the anatomy he gives includes a myology rather new for the time (Pietsch, 1995). His Historia Piscium, which is in Latin and in French, printed on opposite pages with separate numbering, was probably intended only as an introduction to a true general natural history of these animals. Engelmann, 1846; Pietsch, 1995.