Encyclopedie Méthodique

[Neal Evenhuis]

At 11:20 AM -0600 1/23/01, Andrew Smith wrote:
>Hello All,
>
>I am looking for information on the authorship and dates of volume 10
>of the Encyclopedie Méthodique...

Hi Andrew,

I am finishing a large study of the history, accurate dates of 
publication, and authorship of the entire Encyclopédie Méthodique. 
Yes. All 166 1/2 (or so) volumes.

The common method used throughout the 102 livraisons of the EM for 
authorship was to put the author(s)' initials or surname in 
parentheses following an entry. There are a few footnotes in some 
volumes that further clarify authorship (such as the one on page 45 
of volume 8 of the Hist. Nat. explaining Olivier's excursion to the 
Ottoman Empire and Persia and that other authors were responsible for 
various entries during his absence). In addition, some otherwise 
troublesome authorships or editorships were explained in the 
newsletter (Mercure de France) owned by the publisher of the EM 
(Charles Panckoucke), but those I've seen rarely pertain to natural 
history.

Volume 10 usually has the natural history entries ending with 
"(Latr.)" [= Latreille] or "(S.F. et A. Serv.)" [= Lepeletier & 
Serville] or, more rarely, other authorships. These are separate 
authorships for each entry and "usually" only were specified when a 
new species was described. The authorship for the entire volume 10 of 
the "Histoire Naturelle..." is Latreille, Lepeletier, Serville & 
Guérin.

For more information of authorship and dating of this work, there is 
a short synthesis of my study published in my bibliography of Diptera:

Evenhuis, N.L. 1997. Litteratura Taxonomica Dipterorum (1758-1930). 
Backhuys Publ., Leiden. [see pp. 226-229]

This includes a list of citations of all previous studies on the EM 
including dating and authorship problems, if anyone is interested in 
pulling out the literature.


Cheers,

Neal