The patrimonial reserve of the Marseille Saint-Charles Science Library contains almost 2,500 volumes. It was set up some fifteen years ago to isolate and protect the library's most valuable collections, which total around 145,000 volumes (monographs, theses and periodicals).
The heritage reserve includes ten manuscripts whose interest is either directly linked to the history of the Faculty of Science (manuscripts Ms1 by Alphonse Derbès, Ms3 by Albert Vayssière, Ms4 by Paul Gourret, Ms7 by Edouard Heckel), or to the history of Provençal botany: We'd like to mention Louis Gérard's manuscript Ms2 and, of course, the manuscript Ms8 (over 2200 watercolour plates) of Dr. Joseph Poucel's flora, donated to the university library by his descendants in 1971, whose interest was such that the entire collection was recently digitized.
Within the reserve, botany is by far the most abundant and precious corpus. Many great names are represented, whether in the general history of the discipline (Theophrastus, Pliny, Fuchs, Dodoens, Bauhin, Burman, Lécluse, Candolle, Ray, Tournefort, Jaume Saint-Hilaire, Reichenbach...) or in the history of the discipline more directly linked to Provence (Adanson, Darluc, Garidel, Gérard, Roux, Castagne...).
The oldest document dates from 1542: De Historia stirpium commentarii insignes (call number 14) by Leonhardt Fuchs.
Some of these documents feature sumptuous color plates, some in very large format: These include, but are not limited to, Traité des arbres et des arbustes (7 volumes, call no. 48) by Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau, Plantes de la France décrites et peintes d'après nature (10 volumes, call no. 5802) by Jean-Henri Jaume Saint-Hilaire, Flora Napolitana (7 volumes, call no. 148) by Michele Tenore, Iconografia della fauna italica (3 volumes, call no. 17) by Charles-Lucien Bonaparte, Icones florae germanicae (numerous volumes, call no. 7505) by Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig Reichenbach, Flore des serres et des jardins de l'Europe (14 volumes, call no. 5286), The Orchid Album (7 volumes, call no. 5917), Lindenia (3 volumes, call no. 5918) by Jean Linden.
Other disciplines are also well represented. This is particularly true of zoology and the natural sciences in the broadest sense (Linné, Cuvier, Lamarck, Buffon, Spallanzani, Swammerdam...). Among the documents with splendid color plates are Charles d'Orbigny's famous Dictionnaire universel d'histoire naturelle (16 volumes, over 300 color plates, call no. 10631), Paul Gervais's Histoire naturelle des mammifères (call no. 5269), Histoire naturelle des oiseaux (call number 5276) by Emmanuel Le Maout, Recherches pour servir à l'histoire naturelle des mammifères (2 volumes, call number 5077) by Henri and Alphone Milne-Edwards, as well as two fundamental works for ornithology in Provence: Ornithologie provençale (3 volumes, call number 5270) by Polydore Roux and Richesses ornithologiques du Midi de la France (call number 5220) by Jaubert and Barthélémy-Lapommeraye.
Equally important are numerous travel accounts and expedition reports with scientific, geographical and ethnological pretensions, often containing magnificent plates and, in more recent times, splendid black and white photographs, including Relation d'un voyage du Levant (call no. 10973) by Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, Voyage aux Indes Orientales et à la Chine (3 volumes, call number 24412) by Pierre Sonnerat, Voyage autour du monde pendant les années 1790, 1791 et 1792 (3 volumes, call number 5697) by Etienne Marchand (born in La Ciotat), Voyage de Dentrecasteaux envoyé à la recherche de La Pérouse (2 volumes, call number 5518) by Elisabeth-Paul-Edouard de Rossel, Mission scientifique du Cap-Horn, 1882-1883 (7 volumes, call number 5583), National Antarctic Expedition: 1901-1904 (numerous volumes, call no. 6061).
On a more occasional basis, but nonetheless representative, numerous major authors and/or works are represented in the fields of Mathematics and Physics (Galileo, Newton, Descartes, Bernoulli, Euler, Mouraille...), Astronomy (Bailly, Flammarion, Guillemin...), Chemistry (Macquer and his Dictionary, Fourcroy, Chevreul...), Geology (Saporta...) or Industrial Sciences (Franklin, Eiffel...).
