Henry FOLEY (Vignory, Haute-Marne 1871-1956), military physi - Lot 21

Lot n° 21
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Henry FOLEY (Vignory, Haute-Marne 1871-1956), military physi - Lot 21
Henry FOLEY (Vignory, Haute-Marne 1871-1956), military physician, specialist in Saharan environments, director of the Health Service for the southern Algerian territories, then head of the Saharan laboratories at the Pasteur Institute of Algeria; he spent his entire career in Algeria. Autograph letter signed, 6 pp. in-8. Ras-el-Aïn par El-Aricha (Oran), February 21, 1905. Letter on the botany of the Algerian-Moroccan highlands, illustrated with a sketch. He tells of being a doctor on an expedition to Morocco with 720 men through unknown and inhospitable country; they had built a post near a tribe with abundant water. He began to explore the region and summarizes. "Outside the well-irrigated zone of crops, the country is horrible, bare like all the highlands. In 9 months, I've barely seen a few showers, and the Oued Charef, which meanders 4 kilometers west of Rai-el-Ain between high banks carved out of the Quaternary diluvium, has never offered me the slightest cryptogamic find. It's true that the country isn't safe enough for a naturalist's soul to enjoy the peace and quiet essential for fruitful research. The other day, however, I was greatly intrigued by the presence of a considerable quantity of gara on the surface of the ground (gara are hills with an absolutely flat upper table, which emerge, Tertiary rocks, like gigantic witnesses above the plains that Quaternary erosion has dug out and more or less levelled at their foot [...] (sketch)". But he has made a botanical find that he sends to her. "The gara I was exploring is very steep: only Moroccan shepherds and botanists climb its slopes [...]. There are no plants on the surface of the gara, except for a few poor clumps of halfa (stipa tenacissima) and artemisca herba-alba asso, which the natives use almost exclusively as fuel under the name of 'cheih' [...]".
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