Nouvel atlas de poche des champignons Comestibles et Vénéneux les plus répandus.

Dumée, PaulProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.5

Word count: 242K words
Chapters: 25

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Nouvel atlas de poche des champignons Comestibles et Vénéneux les plus répandus.Author: Dumée, Paul,Language: French, Class: QK: Science: Botany, Release Date: Dec 2, 2017

Editor's review

This is a French pocket atlas of mushrooms, an old botany title in Project Gutenberg's free eBook collection. Its value lies not in cutting-edge taxonomy but in the historical way of observing embodied in its plates and morphological descriptions: the author, Paul Dumée, takes the identification of edible and poisonous mushrooms as his main thread and presents common species together, making it suitable as a sample of early mycological literature. Readers can see how early twentieth-century European amateurs and scholars organized knowledge of "edible/inedible" and the organizing logic of atlas-type reference books. Because the original is in French and classification names may have been updated, today it should be read as a text in the history of science and natural history, not as a direct basis for foraging. It suits readers interested in the history of mycology, French natural-history literature, and old atlas plates, who can enjoy an interesting version-comparison experience when consulting modern field guides.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Researchers interested in early mycological literature and the history of natural-history atlases
Readers with basic French reading ability who want to practice reading old French scientific texts
University teachers and students collecting materials for atlas version comparison or history-of-science courses
Book collectors who like old botanical and mushroom illustrations and care about books as physical objects

Not a good fit for

Outdoor enthusiasts hoping to forage wild mushrooms directly by following the book
Professional mycologists who need modern taxonomy, toxicity data, and current nomenclature
General readers with no French at all who read only Chinese popular science

Reading tips

Start with the table of contents and plate captions to build a framework of the species covered, then check each species' current scientific name against a modern field guide.
Mark edible and poisonous entries with two colors of labels, focusing on the morphological grounds by which the author distinguishes them.
When encountering old French terms, first check the context and plates; do not read word by word—keep a natural-history browsing rhythm.
If using it for writing, excerpt the plate arrangement and descriptive sentence patterns as material for the history of science, not as a foraging guide.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Can this book be used directly to identify wild mushrooms and decide whether they are edible?

Not recommended. The book is a historical atlas; classification names, toxicity knowledge, and identification criteria may all differ from contemporary research, and it lacks the microscopic and molecular information required today. It is suitable as material for the history of science and plate comparison; foraging in the field must rely on authoritative contemporary field guides and local professional guidance.

Can I read this book without knowing French?

You can use it to a limited extent. The plates and scientific names are the cross-language parts, and readers can compare species with the help of modern field guides; but the main descriptions, edibility notes, and author's remarks are all in French, so without French most of the information is lost. If you only want to see what an old atlas looks like, you can still leaf through it.

What are the usage characteristics of the Project Gutenberg version?

It is a public-domain text provided by the free eBook project, convenient for searching, copying, and teaching citation, but layout and plate clarity depend on the production quality of that electronic edition. Readers should treat it as an accessible electronic copy of an old book and verify the original edition information and plate captions when citing it.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Dumée, Paul Author

Paul Dumée is a foreign author about whose life very little is publicly known; his nationality, dates of birth and death, and educational background are not clearly recorded in available sources. What can be confirmed is that he wrote mushroom guides in French. Within the library's holdings, two works appear under his name, both titled Nouvel atlas de poche des champignons Comestibles et Vénéneux les plus répandus, meaning "New Pocket Atlas of the Most Common Edible and Poisonous Mushrooms." The subject indicates that his writing focused on practical fungal identification. Judging from this topic, the author addressed foragers and nature enthusiasts, seeking to help readers distinguish edible from poisonous species through a portable illustrated guide and thereby reduce the risk of mistaken picking and consumption. Such guides typically combine detailed illustrations with morphological descriptions and emphasize comparative identification, with a practical rather than theoretical orientation. Because public information is limited, details of his life, scholarly standing, and the reception and influence of his works remain difficult to establish; he can currently be characterized only as a compiler of popular mushroom atlases.