‘La Guerre aux Insectes’: Pest Control and Agricultural Reform in the French Enlightenment

¹This article began as a paper for Pamela H. Smith's ‘Knowledge in Transit’ graduate seminar. I would like to thank the participants of that seminar for comments and feedback. I would also like to thank Pamela Smith, Carl Wennerlind, Anya Zilberstein, Christopher L. Brown, Charly Coleman, Matthew Jones, Peter Walker and Melissa Morris for their suggestions and comments on this paper. Finally, thanks to Vanessa Copeland for invaluable assistance in the archives in Paris. The author acknowledges support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Columbia University.

Summary

This paper examines the entomological investigations carried out by the French naturalist Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau during a series of insect epidemics that ravaged France in the second half of the eighteenth century.

¹ This article began as a paper for Pamela H. Smith's ‘Knowledge in Transit’ graduate seminar. I would like to thank the participants of that seminar for comments and feedback. I would also like to thank Pamela Smith, Carl Wennerlind, Anya Zilberstein, Christopher L. Brown, Charly Coleman, Matthew Jones, Peter Walker and Melissa Morris for their suggestions and comments on this paper. Finally, thanks to Vanessa Copeland for invaluable assistance in the archives in Paris. The author acknowledges support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Columbia University.

It shows how a particularly fierce invasion of caterpillars in the Angoumois region in the 1760s sparked theoretical debates about the nature of animal generation between academic naturalists, farmers, provincial officials and amateur naturalists. As part of a wider effort to reform agricultural production in France, Duhamel du Monceau sought to eliminate vernacular understandings of insect generation and to reform local pest control techniques. In his attempt to develop a body of pest-control knowledge grounded in the systematic observation of insect generation, however, Duhamel du Monceau relied heavily on the efforts of amateur naturalists. The paper shows how he mobilized a nation-wide network of entomological observers, and collected specimens and observational reports from farmers, improving landlords and local officials throughout France. Some informants did not only act as ‘mere’ observers, but formulated their own causal claims about insect generation that sometimes contradicted those of their metropolitan counterpart. Finally, it demonstrates that a ‘patriotic’ discourse that joined agricultural improvement and civic virtue provided a powerful impetus for the formation of collaborative relationships between academic naturalists, state officials and enlightened agricultural improvers.

Notes

¹ This article began as a paper for Pamela H. Smith's ‘Knowledge in Transit’ graduate seminar. I would like to thank the participants of that seminar for comments and feedback. I would also like to thank Pamela Smith, Carl Wennerlind, Anya Zilberstein, Christopher L. Brown, Charly Coleman, Matthew Jones, Peter Walker and Melissa Morris for their suggestions and comments on this paper. Finally, thanks to Vanessa Copeland for invaluable assistance in the archives in Paris. The author acknowledges support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Columbia University.

² François Marie Arouet (Voltaire). Correspondence and related documents: III: May 1734–June 1736, letters D731–D1106, in Les Œuvres complètes de Voltaire, edited by Theodore Besterman (Geneva, Banbury & Oxford: Institut et Musée Voltaire & Voltaire Foundation, 1968), vol. 87, 116–7.

³ For the place of entomology and natural history in the eighteenth-century book trade see: Roger Hahn, The Anatomy of a Scientific Institution: The Paris Academy of Sciences, 1666–1803 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 87–9; William Noblett, ‘Dru Drury, his Illustrations of natural history (1770–82) and the European market for printed books’, Quarendon, XV 2 (1985), 83–102; William Noblett, ‘Pennant and his Publisher: Benjamin White, Thomas Pennant and Of London’, Archives of Natural History, 11 (October 1982), 61–8; Marc Olivier ‘Through a Flea-Glass Darkly: Enlightened Entomologists and the Redemption of Aesthetics in Eighteenth-Century France’, in Insect Poetics, edited by Eric C. Brown (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 242–62; Tomomi Kinukawa, ‘Natural History as Entrepreneurship: Maria Sibylla Merian's Correspondence with J. G. Volkamer II and James Petiver’, Archives of Natural History, 38 (October 2011), 313–27. For the widespread popularity of natural history in general see: Emma Spary, Utopia's Garden: French Natural History from Old Regime to Revolution (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2000), 19–33.

⁴ Frances Terpak, ‘Objects and Contexts’, in Devices of Wonder: From the World in a Box to Images on a Screen, edited by Barbara Maria Stafford (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2001), 214–20; On the market for microscopes in general: Marc. K. Ratcliff, The Quest for the Invisible: Microscopy in the Enlightenment (Surrey: Ashgate, 2009), 77–102.

⁵ William Noblett, ‘Publishing by the Author a Case Study of Dru Drury's Illustrations of Natural History (1770–82)’, Publishing History, 23 (1988), 67–94; Mike Fitton and Sharon Shute, ‘Sir Joseph Bank's Collection of Insects’, in Sir Joseph Banks: A Global Perspective (London: Royal Botanic Gardens, 1994), 209–13; Natalie Zemon Davis, Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 140–202; Pamela Gilbert, John Abbot: Birds, Butterfiles and Other Wonders (London: Merell Holberton, 1998); Starr Douglas and E. Geoffrey Hancock, ‘Insect Collecting in Africa during the eighteenth century and William Hunter's collection’, Archives of Natural History, 34 (October 2007), 293–306; Starr Douglas, ‘The Making of Scientific Knowledge in an Age of Slavery: Henry Smeathman, Sierra Leone, and Natural History’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 9 (2008), 218–30; Janice Neri, The Insect and the Image: Visualizing Nature in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1700 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011); Eric Jorink, Reading the Book of Nature in the Dutch Golden Age, 1575–1715 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 247–52.

⁶ Deirdre Coleman, ‘Entertaining Entomology: Insects and Insect Performers in the Eighteenth-Century’, Eighteenth-Century Life, 30 (Summer 2006), 107–134.

⁷ Gerhard H. Muller, ‘René Antoine F. de Réaumur et la classification des insectes’, Rivista di Biologia, 79 (1986), 203–228; Marc J. Ratcliff, The Quest for the Invisible: Microscopy in the Enlightenment (Surrey: Ashgate, 2009), 57–73; Mary Terrall, ‘Following Insects Around: Tools and Techniques of Eighteenth-Century Natural History’, British Journal for the History of Science, 43 (2010), 573–88; Brian W. Ogilvie, ‘Attending to Insects: Francis Willughby and John Ray’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 66 (2012), 357–72.

⁸ Mary Fissel and Roger Cooter have remarked that the history of eighteenth-century science has been focused almost exclusively on towns and cities despite the predominantly rural character of early modern Europe: Mary Fissel and Roger Cooter, ‘Exploring Natural Knowledge: Science and the Popular’, in The Cambridge History of Science: Eighteenth-Century Science, edited by Roy Porter (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), vol. 4, 139.

⁹ For studies of the damage caused by invasions of destructive insects in the eighteenth-century see: E.L Jones, ‘Creative Disruptions in American Agriculture, 1620–1820’, Agricultural History, 4 (October 1974), 510–528; Ronald C. Jennings, ‘The Locust Problem in Cyprus’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 51 (February 1988), 281–313; Alan Taylor, ‘The Hungry Year: 1789 on the Northern Border of Revolutionary America’, in Dreadful Visitations: Confronting Natural Catastrophe in the Age of Enlightenment, edited by Alessa Johns (New York: Routledge, 1999), 39–69.

¹⁰ For studies that reconstruct the cultural and social meaning of ‘vermin’ and pests in the early modern period see: Mary Fissel, ‘Imagining Vermin in Early Modern England’, History Workshop Journal, 47 (1999), 1–29; Harry Berger, Caterpillage: Reflections on Seventeenth-Century Dutch Still Life Painting (New York: Fordham University Press, 2011).

¹¹ Philip J. Pauly, ‘Fighting the Hessian Fly: American and British Responses to Insect Invasion, 1776–1789’, Environmental History, 7 (2002), 485–507; Philip J. Pauly, Fruits and Plains: The Horticultural Transformation of America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), ch. 2; But see also: Karl. H. Dannenfeldt, ‘The Control of Vertebrate Pests in Renaissance Agriculture’, Agricultural History, 56 (Summer 1982), 542–559; Jennings, ‘The Locust Problem in Cyprus’; Benjamin Arbel, ‘Sauterelles et Mentalités: Le Cas de la Chypre Vénitienne’, Annales: Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations, 44 (1989), 1057–1074; Brooke Hunter, ‘Creative Destructions: The Forgotten Legacy of the Hessian Fly’, in The Economy of Early America: Historical Perspectives and New Directions, edited by Cathy Mason (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), 236–262.

¹² Pauly, ‘Fighting the Hessian Fly’, 499.

¹³ Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau and Mathieu Tillet, ‘Mémoire Sur l'Insecte qui dévore les grains de l'Angoumois’, Histoire de l'Académie Royale des Sciences (Paris, 1761), 297; René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur, Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire des Insectes (Paris, 1736), 467–514.

¹⁴ Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau and Mathieu Tillet, ‘Mémoire Sur l'Insecte qui dévore les grains de l'Angoumois’, Histoire de l'Académie Royale des Sciences (Paris, 1761), 297; René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur, Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire des Insectes (Paris, 1736), 467–514.

¹⁵ Recent works on botany and political economy include: John Gascoigne, Science in the Service of Empire: Joseph Banks, The British State and the Uses of Science in the Age of Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Lisbet Koerner, Linnaeus: Nature and Nation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999); Richard Drayton, Nature's Government: Science, Imperial Britain and the Improvement of the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000); Emma Spary, Utopia's Garden; Londa Shiebinger and Claudia Swan, eds., Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce and Politics in the Early Modern World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005); Londa Shiebinger, Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006); Harold J. Cook, Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine and Science in the Dutch Golden Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007); Frederik Jonsson, ‘Rival Economies of Global Commerce: Adam Smith and the Natural Historians’, American Historical Review 115 (December 2010), 1342–63.

¹⁶ On the ‘agronomic movement’ see: André J. Bourde, Agronomie et Agronomes en France au XVIIIe Siècle (Paris: S.E.V.P.N, 1967); Jean-Marc Moriceau, ‘Au rendez-vous de la ‘Révolution Agricole’ dans la France du XVIIIe siècle: à propos des régions de grande culture’, Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 29 (1994), 27–63; François Sigaut, ‘Entre pratiques raisonnées et science efficace, l’âge des doctrines en agronomie’, in Traditions Agronomiques Européennes: Élaboration et transmission depuis l'Antiquité, edited by Marie Claire Amouretti and François Sigaut (Paris: Éditions du CTHS, 1998): 197–222; John Shovlin, The Political Economy of Virtue: Luxury Patriotism and the Origins of the French Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), 52–73; John Shovlin, ‘Rethinking Enlightened Reform in a French Context’, in Enlightened Reform in Southern Europe and Its Atlantic Colonies c. 1750–1830, edited by Gabriel Paquette (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), 47–62; Jeremy L. Caradonna, The Enlightenment in Practice, Academic Prize Contests and Intellectual Culture in France, 1670–1794 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012), 192–3.

¹⁷ The Journal Oeconomique, for example, published five articles on the topic in its inaugural year: ‘De La Rosée Farineuse qui tombe sur le Houblon. Divers moyens pour en détourner les mauvais effets’, Journal Oeconomique ou Mémoires, Notes et Avis sur l'agriculture, les arts, le commerce (Paris, Janvier 1751), 65–70; ‘Des Choux, Raves, Navets et autres Plantes semblables. Moyer de les garantir des ravages du gibier et des insectes qui les rongent’, Journal Oeconomique (Paris, Avril 1751), 25–8; ‘Recette distribuée par feu M. le Curé de S. Sulpice, pour conserver les bleds, empêcher les calandes et autres insectes de leur faire aucun tort; et pour délivrer les bleds et les greniers de ces malheureux insectes lorsqu'ils sont infectés’, Journal Oeconomique (Paris, May 1751), 41–47; ‘Contre les Insectes des Jardins et des Maison’, Journal Oeconomique (Paris, Juin 1751), 50; ‘Lettre sur l'utilité de la Plante Numaria … contre les vers qui se mettent dans le Bled à l'Éditeur du Journal Oeconomique’, Journal Oeconomique (Paris, Mars 1751), 4–11; Couronnes Académiques ou Recueil des Prix Proposés par les Sociétés Savantes, avec les noms de ceux qui les ont obtenus, des concurrens distingués, des auteurs qui ont écrit sur les meme sujets, le titre et le lieu de l'impression de leurs ouvrages (Paris, 1787), 194.

¹⁸ For a similar approach see: Emma Spary, Utopia's Garden, 49–98; Terrall, ‘Following Insects Around’; Lorraine Daston and Elizabeth Lunbeck, eds., Histories of Scientific Observation (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2011), 369–444.

¹⁹ The development of a noble discourse of ‘patriotism’ has been addressed in: David A. Bell, the Cult of the Nation in France, 1600–1800 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001); Jay Smith, Nobility Re-imagined: The Patriotic Nation in Eighteenth-Century France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005); John Shovlin, The Political Economy of Virtue: Luxury, Patriotism and the Origins of the French Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006).

²⁰ Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau, Éléments d'Agriculture (Paris, 1753), viii.

²¹ John Shovlin, ‘Rethinking Enlightened Reform’, 51.

²² Duhamel du Monceau, Éléments d'agriculture, iii, x.

²³ Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte qui dévore les grains de l'Angoumois Avec les moyens que l'on peut employer pour le détruire (Paris, 1762), 3.

²⁴ Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte, 5; Bertin communicated this report to the Académie: ‘À Propos d'une récolte d'Angoumois Attaquée Par un insecte’, Archives de l'Académie des Sciences, Pochettes de Séances, 28 Juin 1760, f. 334.

²⁵ ‘À Propos d'une récolte d'Angoumois Attaquée Par un insecte’, Archives de l'Académie des Sciences, Pochettes de Séances, 28 Juin 1760, f. 334.

²⁶ Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte, 6.

²⁷ Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte, 6–7.

²⁸ Bourde, Agronomie et Agronomes, 1376–1389; Steven Laurence Kaplan, Provisioning Paris: Merchants and Millers in the Grain and Flour Trade During the Eighteenth-Century (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), 34; For an overview of the hierarchy of state administrators involved in the regulation and administration of agricultural production: Steven Laurence Kaplan, The Bakers of Paris and the Bread Questio, 1700–1775 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), 458–63.

²⁹ The increasing focus on utilitarian, state-sponsored science at the Académie des Sciences is discussed in: Bourde, Agronomie et Agronomes, 112–118; Roger Hahn, The Anatomy of a Scientific Institution: The Royal Academy of Sciences, 1666–1803 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), ch. 5; Charles Coulston Gillispie, Science and Polity in France at the End of the Old Regime (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980); Keith Michael Baker, Inventing the French Revolution: Essays on French Political Culture in the Eighteenth-Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 153–66; J.B. Shank, The Newton Wars and the Beginning of the French Enlightenment (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2008), 86–94; Caradonna, The Enlightenment in Practice, 181. For a similar development in the provincial academies see: Daniel Roche, Le Siècle des lumières en province: Académies et académiciens provinciaux, 1680–1789 (Paris: EHESS, 1978), 55–75.

³⁰ Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte, 7.

³¹ Couronnes Académiques ou Recueil des Prix Proposés par les Sociétés Savantes, avec les noms de ceux qui les ont obtenus, des Concurrens distingués, des Auteurs qui ont écrit sur les mêmes sujets, le titre et le lieu de l'impression de leurs ouvrages (Paris, 1787), 320; For a brief account of Tillet's work on agricultural epidemics see: Gilles Denis, ‘La Représentation de la Maladie des Plantes: Ruraux, Botanistes et Agronomes’, in La Nature en Révolution 1750–1800, edited by Andrée Corvole (Paris: L’édition Harmattan, 1993), 94–106.

³² Charles C. Gillispie, Science and Polity, 337–339; Claude Viel, ‘Duhamel Du Monceau, Naturaliste, Physicien Et Chimiste’, Revue d'Histoire Des Sciences, 38, no. 1 (1985), 55–71; Nicolas de Condorcet, ‘Éloge de M. Duhamel’, Histoire de l'Academie Royale Des Sciences avec les mémoires de mathématiques et de physique pour la meme année tirés des registres de cette académie (Paris, 1785), 132.

³³ André J. Bourde, The Influence of England on the French Agronomes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), 31–72; Michel Allard, Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau et le Ministère de la Marine (Montreal: Lemeac, 1970); Shovlin, The Political Economy of Virtue, 52–73.

³⁴ Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte, 15.

³⁵ Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte, 13.

³⁶ Duhamel du Monceau and Tillet, ‘Mémoire’, 292; Louis François Henri de Menon, Marquis de Turbilly sent his observations on the reproduction of the caterpillars of Angoumois to the Académie des Sciences: Marquis de Turbilly, ‘Essay sur le moyen de détruire les insectes qui vivent dans l'intérieur des plantes ou des fruits qui peut être appliqué aux chenilles qui détruisent les bleds’, Archives de l'Académie des Sciences, Pochettes de Séances, 28 Juin 1760, f. 334.

³⁷ Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte, 146.

³⁸ For a summary of these beliefs about insect generation see also: Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau, Supplément au Traité de la Conservation des Grains (Paris, 1765), 39.

³⁹ For a summary of these beliefs about insect generation see also: Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau, Supplément au Traité de la Conservation des Grains (Paris, 1765), 228.

⁴⁰ For a summary of these beliefs about insect generation see also: Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau, Supplément au Traité de la Conservation des Grains (Paris, 1765), 159.

⁴¹ Historians of science have treated the ‘spontaneous generation controversy’ as an episode in the intellectual history of the early modern period, yet Duhamel Du Monceau's concern to extinguish the belief in spontaneous generation in the Angoumois countryside suggests that this was not simply a purely theoretical debate amongst natural philosophers, but one that engaged naturalists and agricultural writers of a more practical bent. For an overview of the ‘spontaneous generation controversy’: Thomas Huxley, ‘Biogenesis and Abiogenesis’, in Collected Essays: Discourses Biological and Geological (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1894), 229–71; John Farley, The Spontaneous Generation Controversy From Descartes to Oparin (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977); Peter McLaughlin, ‘Spontaneous versus Equivocal Generation in Early Modern Science’, Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology 10 (2005), 79–88; P. Duris, ‘L'introuvable Révolution Scientifique. Francesco Redi Et La Géneration Spontanée,’ Annals of Science, 67 (October 2010), 431–55. A notable exception is Mary Terrall's work which has examined the debates on animal generation within the genteel public sphere: Mary Terrall, The Man Who Flattened the Earth: Maupertuis and the Sciences in the Enlightenment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 199–230.

⁴² Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte, 148.

⁴³ Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte, 152.

⁴⁴ Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte, 152.

⁴⁵ Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte, 18.

⁴⁶ Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte, 171.

⁴⁷ Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte, 14.

⁴⁸ Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte, 111–2, 149–50, 160.

⁴⁹ Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte, 160–71.

⁵⁰ Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte, 161.

⁵¹ Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte, 148–9.

⁵² Duhamel du Monceau and Tillet, ‘Mémoire’, 291.

⁵³ Duhamel du Monceau and Tillet, ‘Mémoire’, 12.

⁵⁴ Duhamel du Monceau and Tillet, ‘Mémoire’, 10, 31, 41, 48, 52.

⁵⁵ Duhamel du Monceau and Tillet, ‘Mémoire’, 10, 31, 41, 48, 52.

⁵⁶ Duhamel du Monceau and Tillet, ‘Mémoire’, 87; This observation is described with much more circumstantial detail in Duhamel du Monceau and Tillet, ‘Mémoire’, 298–299; The report of this observation to the Académie is in: ‘Observations sur Papillons’, Archives de l'Académie des Sciences, Pochettes de Séances, 3 September 1760.

⁵⁷ Duhamel du Monceau and Tillet, ‘Mémoire’, 67.

⁵⁸ Duhamel du Monceau and Tillet, ‘Mémoire’, 89.

⁵⁹ Duhamel du Monceau and Tillet, ‘Mémoire’, 289–331; Duhamel du Monceau and Tillet, ‘Sur l'Insecte qui dévore les grains de l'Angoumois’, Histoire de l'Académie Royale des Sciences Royal des Sciences avec les mémoires de mathématiques et de physique pour la même année tirés des registres de cette académie (Paris, 1763), 66–77; While in Angoumois Duhamel du Monceau had sent a report of his observations and samples of infected wheat to the Académie des Sciences: ‘Note Lue par M. Fougeroux le 2 aout 1760’, Archives Nationales de France, AP 127/6, f. 1.

⁶⁰ A.N. AP 127/6, f. 4–5.

⁶¹ Duhamel du Monceau drew on the experimental and narrative techniques developed by entomologists like Réaumur and Charles Bonnet: René Sigrist, ‘L'Expérimentation Comme Rhétorique De La Preuve: L'exemple Du Traité d'Insectologie De Charles Bonnet’, Revue d'Histoire Des Sciences, 54, no. 4 (2001), 419–49.

⁶² The classic account of the relationship between witnessing and fact-making is: Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Boyle and the Experimental Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985).

⁶³ Duhamel du Monceau and Tillet, Histoire d'un Insecte, 28.

⁶⁴ Duhamel du Monceau and Tillet, Histoire d'un Insecte, 29.

⁶⁵ Duhamel du Monceau and Tillet, Histoire d'un Insecte, 35–6.

⁶⁶ Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte, 159.

⁶⁷ Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte, 93.

⁶⁸ Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte, 42.

⁶⁹ Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte, 10; For the importance of ‘emulation’ in stimulating agricultural experiments and observations amongst the provincial nobility and peasantry see: Smith, Nobility Re-imagined, 187; John Shovlin, Political Economy of Virtue, passim; Liana Vardi, The Physiocrats and the World of the Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 116.

⁷⁰ Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte 12, 117, 190, 207.

⁷¹ Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte 12, 117.

⁷² Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte 12, 138–146; The Dutch naturalist Anton Van Leeuwehoek had conducted similar calculations in the late seventeenth century: Frank N. Egerton, ‘Leeuwenhoek as a founder of animal demography’, Journal of the History of Biology, 1 (Spring 1968), 1–22.

⁷³ Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte 30.

⁷⁴ Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte 30, 11.

⁷⁵ Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau, Supplément au Traité sur la Conservation des Grains, 26.

⁷⁶ The relevant documents are in B D87, Group no. 8; B D87, Group no.13; B D87, Group no. 14; American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia; A.N. AP 127/6

⁷⁷ Chabot to Duhamel du Monceau, January 5^th, 1763, B D87 Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau Papers, Group no. 8, American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia.

⁷⁸ Chabot to Duhamel du Monceau, January 5^th, 1763, B D87 Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau Papers, Group no. 8, American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia.

⁷⁹ Chabot to Duhamel du Monceau, January 5^th, 1763, B D87 Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau Papers, Group no. 8, American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia.

⁸⁰ Bruté to Duhamel du Monceau, May 21^st, 1762, B D87 Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau Papers, Group no. 8, American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia; This issue was also debated in contemporary agricultural periodicals: ‘De La Rosée Farineuse qui tombe sur le Houblon. Divers moyens pour en détourner les mauvais effets’, Journal Oeconomique (Paris, Janvier 1751), 65–70.

⁸¹ Bruté to Duhamel du Monceau, May 21^st, 1762, B D87 Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau Papers, Group no. 8, American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia.

⁸² Bruté to Duhamel du Monceau, May 21^st, 1762, B D87 Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau Papers, Group no. 8, American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia.

⁸³ Bruté to Duhamel du Monceau, May 21^st, 1762, B D87 Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau Papers, Group no. 8, American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia.

⁸⁴ On the reception of the Traité see: André J. Bourde, The Influence of England on the French Agronomes, 1750–1789, 43–55.

⁸⁵ Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau, Traité de la Culture des Terres, Suivant les Principes de M. Tull; Anglois (Paris, 1753), vol. 2, 176; See also Duhamel du Monceau's further reflections on the causes of plant diseases: Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau, Traité de la Culture des Terres (Paris, 1750), vol. 1, 220–33; Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau, Traité de la Culture des Terres (Paris, 1753), vol. 2, 158–78; Duhamel du Monceau, Éléments d'Agriculture, 304–61.

⁸⁶ Chabot to Duhamel du Monceau January 5^th, 1763, B D87 Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau Papers, Group no. 8, American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia.

⁸⁷ Duhamel du Monceau, Traité de la Culture des Terres (Paris, 1761), vol. 6, 482.

⁸⁸ Toustain de Frontebosse to Duhamel du Monceau, n.d., Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau Papers, B D87 Group no. 8, American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia.

⁸⁹ Antoine de Ferchault de Réaumur used a similar strategy in composing his natural history of insects: Mary Terrall, ‘Following Insects Around: Tools and Techniques of Eighteenth-Century Natural History’, British Journal for the History of Science 43 (December, 2010), 573–588.

⁹⁰ Chabot to Duhamel du Monceau, January 5th, 1763 B D87 Papers of Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau Papers, Group no. 8 American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia; Duhamel du Monceau tried to have four to five hundred copies of a five page pamphlet extract of this book distributed in Angoumois through the intendant. He also hoped to have a copy of the book in its entirety distributed to all the agricultural societies in France: ‘Conservation des Grains’, A.N. H-1503, 19 September 1767, f. 17.

⁹¹ Chabot to Duhamel du Monceau, January 5th, 1763, B D87 Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau Papers, Group No. 8, American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia.

⁹² Dannenfeldt, ‘The Control of Vertebrate Pests’; H.A. Beecham and Jonathan Brown, ‘Crop Pests and Diseases’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales 1750–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), vol. 6; ‘De La Rosée Farineuse qui tombe sur le Houblon. Divers moyens pour en détourner les mauvais effets’, Journal Oeconomique (Paris, Janvier 1751), 65–70; ‘Des Choux, Raves, Navets et autres Plantes semblables. Moyens de les garantir des ravages du gibier et des insectes qui les rongent’, Journal Oeconomique ou Mémoires, Notes et Avis (Paris, Avril 1751), 25–8; ‘Recette distribuée par feu M. le Curé de S. Sulpice, pour conserver les bleds, empêcher les calandes et autres insectes de leur faire aucun tort; et pour délivrer les leds et les greniers de ces malheureux insectes lorsqu'ils sont infectés’, Journal Oeconomique ou Memoires, Notes et Avis (Paris, May 1751), 41–47; ‘Contre les Insectes des Jardins et des Maison’, Journal Oeconomique (Juin 1751), 50; ‘Lettre sur l'utilité de la Plante Numaria … contre les vers qui se mettent dans le Bled a l'Editeur du Journal Oeconomique’, Journal Oeconomique (Paris, Mars 1751), 4–11.

⁹³ ‘Contre les Insectes des Jardins et des Maison’, Journal Oeconomique (Juin 1751), 50.

⁹⁴ ‘Lettre sur l'utilité de la Plante Numaria … contre les vers qui se mettent dans le Bled à l'Éditeur du Journal Oeconomique’, Journal Oeconomique Mémoires, Notes et Avis (Paris, Mars 1751), 4–11.

⁹⁵ Duhamel du Monceau, Traité sur la Conservation des Grains et en Particulier du Froment (Paris, 1753), 92; Toustain de Frontebosse reported that the strong odour of a species of hay had been effective in killing a number of ‘mites’ in the granaries in his region Toustain de Frontebose to Duhamel du Monceau, ‘Moyens pour detruire les mites dans les greniers’, B D87 Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau Papers, Group no. 8 American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia; Duhamel du Monceau also rejected the use of odorous plants and chemical concoctions as insect repellants in: Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte, 203–204; A curé in the Angoumois region sent Duhamel du Monceau a report of a ‘simple’ given to him by a nobleman from Poitiers which was said to completely expel mites from granaries within twenty four hours: ‘Insecte du Bled en Angoumois’, A.N. H-1503, 1766, f. 13.

⁹⁶ Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau, ‘Observations Météorologiques Faites à Québec par M. Gauthier pendant l'année 1743’, Histoire de l'Académie Royale des Sciences avec les mémoires de mathématiques et de physique pour la même année tirés des registres de cette académie (Paris, 1744), 150; For the official reports on this outbreak see: Public Archives of Canada C11A, vol. 77, f. 22–24; C11A vol. 79, fol. 231–9; C11A vol. 80, fol. 309; C11A vol. 80, fol. 307–8; C11A vol. 79, fol. 240–3; See also Madame de Chasseneuil's experiment with sulfur to exterminate caterpillars: Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte, 207.

⁹⁷ Chabot to Duhamel du Monceau January 5th, 1763, B D87 Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau Papers, Group no. 8 Americal Philosophical Society Philadelphia.

⁹⁸ Duhamel du Monceau, Traité sur la Conservation des Grains (Paris, 1753), 44–5, 92–3.

⁹⁹ Duhamel du Monceau, Traité sur la Conservation des Grains, 92; Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un insecte, 206.

¹⁰⁰ Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte, 17, 194

¹⁰¹ Henri Louis Duhamel du Monceau, Supplément au Traité de la Conservation des Grains, 2. For an overview of Duhamel du Monceau's activities as inspector of the French Marine see: Michel Allard, Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau et le Ministère de la Marine (Montréal: Lemeac, 1970); For an overview of conservation technologies in eighteenth-century France: Steven L. Kaplan, Provisioning Paris, 66–79.

¹⁰² Duhamel du Monceau, Traité sur la Conservation des Grains, 122; Supplément au Traité de la Conservation des Grains, 58–59.

¹⁰³ Duhamel du Monceau, Traité sur la Conservation des Grains, 160; Officials and farmers in the provinces likewise engaged in these experiments: Chabot to Duhamel du Monceau, January 5th, 1763, B D87, Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau Papers, Group no. 8, American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia; Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte, 244–293; ‘Conservation des Grains’, A.N. H-1503, f. 19.

¹⁰⁴ Duhamel du Monceau, Traité sur la Conservation des Grains, 160; Officials and farmers in the provinces likewise engaged in these experiments: Chabot to Duhamel du Monceau, January 5th, 1763, B D87, Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau Papers, Group no. 8, American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia; Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte, 244–293; ‘Conservation des Grains’, A.N. H-1503, f. 19, 58.

¹⁰⁵ Duhamel du Monceau, Supplément au Traité sur la Conservation des Grains, 62, 65.

¹⁰⁶ Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte, 266.

¹⁰⁷ Duhamel du Monceau, Supplément au Traité sur la Conservation des Grains, 68.

¹⁰⁸ Duhamel du Monceau, Supplément au Traité sur la Conservation des Grains, 69; He was also likely responsible for disseminating a pamphlet promoting the use of the oven as a technique for exterminating insects and preserving grain: ‘Expériences faites en Angoumois d'une methode à la portée de tous les cultivateurs, pour mettre les blés en état d'être bien conservés, et même pour en faire périr jusqu'aux moindres insects’, A.N., H-1503, 1763, f. 21.

¹⁰⁹ Duhamel du Monceau, Supplément au Traité sur la Conservation des Grains, 49–50.

¹¹⁰ Duhamel du Monceau, Supplément au Traité sur la Conservation des Grains, 49–67.

¹¹¹ Duhamel du Monceau, Supplément au Traité sur la Conservation des Grains, 127–8;

¹¹² Duhamel du Monceau, Supplément au Traité sur la Conservation des Grains, 131.

¹¹³ ‘Expériences faites en Angoumois d'une methode à la portée de tous les cultivateurs, pour mettre les blés en état d'être bien conservés, et même pour en faire périr jusqu'aux moindres insectes’, A.N. H-1503, 1763, f. 21.

¹¹⁴ ‘Lettre de M. Duhamel du Monceau à M. Parent’, A.N. H-1503, 14 October 1761, f. 23.

¹¹⁵ ‘Mémoire de M. de Montalembert de Cers, Major de la Ville et Château d'Angoulême et Directeur du Bureau d'Agriculture de la ditte ville, touchant la manière de passer le froment au four pour y faire périr les papillons et chrisalydes en conservant le germe du bled’, A.N. H-1503, n.d.; Duhamel du Monceau signaled his intention to incorporate these experiments in his Histoire in a letter to one of Bertin's assistants.

¹¹⁶ ‘Lettre de M. Duhamel du Monceau à M. Parent’, A.N., H-1503, 14 October 1761, f. 23

¹¹⁷ ‘Conservation des Grains’, A.N., H-1503, 10 August 1762.

¹¹⁸ ‘Expériences faites en Angoumois d'une methode à la portée de tous les cultivateurs, pour mettre les blés en état d'être bien conservés, et même pour en faire périr jusqu'aux moindres insects’, A.N. H-1503, 1763, f. 21.

¹¹⁹ Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte, 300.

¹²⁰ Duhamel du Monceau, Supplément au Traité sur la Conservation des Grains, 136.

¹²¹ Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte, 297.

¹²² ‘Conservation des Grains’, A.N., H-1503, 19 September 1762.

¹²³ Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau, Supplément au Traité de la Conservation des Grains, 39–41.

¹²⁴ Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte, 247–251; Duhamel du Monceau, Traité sur la Conservation des Grains (Paris, 1754), 139–140; Duhamel du Monceau, Supplément au Traité sur la conservation des grains, xxiv; Alexandre Ferdinand Léonce Lapostolle, Traité de la Carie ou Bled Noir (Amiens, 1787), 20–21.

¹²⁵ Duhamel du Monceau, Histoire d'un Insecte, 247.

¹²⁶ Chabot to Duhamel du Monceau, January 5th, 1763 B D87 Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau Papers, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia.

¹²⁷ A.N. H-1503, f.14, f. 25.

¹²⁸ Kaplan, Provisioning Paris, 75.

¹²⁹ See: Jacques Cauna, Au Temps des Isles à Sucre: Histoire d'une Plantation de Saint-Domingue au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, A.C.C.T, 1987), 141; Robert Louis Stein, The French Sugar Business in the Eighteenth-Century (Louisiana State University Press, 1988); Alan Taylor, ‘The Hungry Year: 1789 on the Northern Border of Revolutionary America’, 45–182.

¹³⁰ ‘Traduction de la lettre addressée à l'Académie par M. Jean Rudolphe Fager, licencier en médecine à Lipsig du 2 Fevrier 1778’, B D87 Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau Papers, Group no. 13, American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia; ‘Sur les moyens d'empêcher les ravages des fourmis’, B D87, Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau Papers Group no. 13, American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia; ‘Rapport des Commissaires Mr. Fougeroux et Adamson’, B D87, Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau Papers, Group no. 13, American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia.

¹³¹ Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau, ‘Observations Botanico-Météorologiques Faites à Québec par M. Gautier pendant l'année 1743’, Histoire de l'Académie Royale des Sciences (Paris, 1744): 135–55; Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau, ‘Observations Botanico-Météorologiques Faites à Québec, 1743–44 (Paris, 1745), 194–229; Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau, ‘Observations Botanico-Météorologiques Faites à Québec par M. Gautier 1744–45’ (Paris, 1746), 88–97.

¹³² Public Archives of Canada, C11A, fol. 274–5.