TOURNEFORT (Joseph Pitton de). Relation d'un voyage du Levant, fait par ordre du Roy. Contenant L'Histoire Ancienne & Moderne de plusieurs Isles de l'Archipel, de Constantinople, des Côtes de la Mer Noire, de L'Armenie, de la Georgie, des Frontieres de Perse & de l'Asie Mineure. Avec Les Plans des Villes & des Lieux considerables ; Le Genie, les Mœurs, le Commerce & la Religion des differens Peuples qui les habitent ; Et l'Explication des Médailles & des Monumens Antiques. Enrichie de Descriptions & de Figures d'un grand nombre de Plantes rares, de divers Animaux ; Et de plusieurs Observations touchant l'Histoire Naturelle. Lyon : Anisson, Posuel, 1717. - 3 volumes in-8, mottled tan calf, ornate ribbed spine, marbled edges (period binding). Second edition, the first in Lyon, published the same year as the in-4 Paris original by Michel Louis Renaume de la Garance. One of the most interesting voyages to the Levant. Professor at the Collège de France and famous botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1656-1708) was sent by King Louis XIV to the Levant and Africa. He went there in 1700, accompanied by the draughtsman Claude Aubriet and the young German physician Andreas Gundelsheimer. He visited Candia and all the islands of the Archipelago, Constantinople, the southern shores of the Black Sea, Turkish and Persian Armenia, Georgia, Mount Ararat, and returned via Asia Minor to Smyrna. Written in the form of twenty-two letters addressed to the Comte de Pontchartrain, the report provides important ethnographic and historical information on the habits and customs of the populations, trade and religions of the countries crossed, mineralogy, a very detailed description of a large number of new plants (1356) and animals, as well as natural history curiosities. In the history of botany, the author left his name to a new system of plant classification, based primarily on the examination of the corolla. The illustration consists of 153 plates, some of which are fold-outs, depicting views, costumes, maps, animals and plants. Head cover of first volume damaged and missing, that of second volume slightly split at edges, last box of last volume missing. The folding plate on page 227 in the first volume has been doubled at the bottom. Stains and tears in the inner margin of pages 214 and 215 of the last volume, as well as on the plate between these two pages, with damage to the frame and engraving. A few browned leaves and rare stains on the edges of some leaves. Margins of plates sometimes short.