Author: Prof. Dr. Georg Schwedt, paperback, 144 pages, 44 photos and illustrations.

About the book: The Geneva writer, philosopher, educator, composer, and Enlightenment thinker also engaged with botany - from 1762 to 1765 in Val-de-Travers in Switzerland, on St. Peter's Island in Lake Biel, in 1766 in England at Wootton Hall, and finally again in France in Ermonville. He studied the literature of the 17th and 18th centuries, corresponded with Carl von Linné among others, and created several herbaria. He wrote botanical letters and reported in numerous letters about his plant collecting as his green passion. All these areas are presented, with quotes and especially numerous illustrations of portraits of significant botanists, their works, and colorful depictions of the plants mentioned by Rousseau. The book also discusses the herbarium of Rousseau that was lost in a fire during World War II in Berlin, as well as the one that still exists in Zurich. The author himself practiced botany as a student - his herbarium from the 1950s still exists - and studied botany as a minor subject while pursuing his chemistry degree.