La restauration de l'herbier Haller du Muséum national...

Oharrak: Texto en francés, resumen en inglés
Sumario: Famous Swiss naturalist Albretch von Haller (1708-1777) is the author of a fifty nine volume herbarium of dried plants. The Haller herbarium originally taken as spoils of war during the Italian campaigns in 1976 in Pavia is now preserved in the National Museum of Natural History of Paris. The way the Haller herbarium is bound does not allow an exhausting scientific study of the collection. Actually a repeated handling of the bound plates would have resulted in a destruction of plan samples. By far the most damaged, volume nº 16 has been chosen for conservation processing. Both historical and scientific interests of the Halter herbarium have been discussed for a long time. A total dismantling of the volume -without any further binding- appeared as the most satisfactory solution to make the specimen safe to consult. Unbound and restored plates have been inserted into a paper folder. Technical and scientific study helped to choose a paper suitable to mantain the original way the plates were interwoven. Restoring the plates has been particulaly difficult and required a special lining method which had to take the frailty and mass of the plants into account. Two conservation boxes house the restored plates and allow their handling. This restoration work is foreshadowing a project of complete restoration of the other fifty eight volumes and thus allowing a scientific study of the Haller herbarium.