the melvin e. jahn collection - detritus...

TheMELVIN E. JAHNCOLLECTIONof Early Geoscience 1550-1850

Offered bySCHOYER’S BOOKS andSERENDIPITY BOOKS

With a special concentration on Paleontology, Conchology,

Mineralogy, and Private Museums of Natural History.

Some Significant Books: A List. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 3

Melvin Jahn, Bibliophile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pages 4 – 5

Survey of the Jahn Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pages 6 – 8

Catalogue of the Collection arranged chronologically . . . . . . . . . . pages 9 – 89

Author Index arranged alphabetically, with values . . . . . . . . . . . . pages 90 – 96

References Cited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pages 97 – 98

The Melvin E. Jahn

Collectionof Early Geoscience 1550-1850

SCHOYER’S BOOKS and SERENDIPITY BOOKS, ABAA/ILAB

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—Schoyer’s Books— —Serendipity Books—PO Box 9471 1201 University Ave. Berkeley, CA 94709 Berkeley, CA 94702510-548-8009 [email protected] [email protected]

Essays: Ian JacksonCatalogue: Marc Selvaggio (Schoyer’s Books) © Schoyer’s Books, 2004Design: Andrea Latham

This is a revised edition of the original sales prospectus.Although the collection is only available as a single unit,an approximate value for each item appears [set in brackets]in the Author Index section.

Schoyer’s Books & Serendipity BooksAre Members of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America.

&“Nature reserves many things from our knowledge.”

—Ole Worm, Museum Wormianum, 1655

Some Significant Books in the Jahn Collection

Aldrovandi, Ulisse. Opera Omnia. Bologna, 1599-1667. Complete 13-volume set in uniformcontemporary bindings.

Beringer, Johann Bartholomew Adam. Lithographiae Wirceburgenis. Both the first (1726)and second (1767) editions.

Boodt, Anselmus de. Gemmarum et lapidum historia. First, second, and third editions (1609,1636, 1647), each in contemporary binding.

Buonanni, Filippo et al. Rerum Naturalium Historia…in Museo Kircheriano, 1773-82.

Burtin, Francois-Xavier de. Oryctographie de Bruxelles, 1784 issue with hand-colored plates.

Ellis, John. An essay towards a natural history of the corallines, 1755—presentation copyfrom Ellis to his illustrator, Georg Dionysius Ehret.

Gualtieri, Niccolo. Index Testarum Conchyliorum, 1742.

Hebenstreit, Johann Ernst. Museum Ricterianum, 1743—the exceedingly rare first issue withhand-colored plates, one of five known copies.

Lhwyd, Edward. Lithophylacii Britannici Ichnographia—the rare 1699 first edition.

Lister, Martin. Historiae Animalium Angliae, 1678; Conchyliorum bivalvium, 1696; and hismagnificently illustrated Historiae sive Synopsis methodicae conchyliorum, 1770.

Mercati, Michele. Metallotheca, both the first (1717) and second (1719) editions.

Moscardo, Ludovico. Note overo Memorie del museo de Ludovico Moscardo, 1656.

Rashleigh, Philip. Specimens of British Minerals. London: Bulmer, 1797-1802.

Rumpf, Georg Eberhard. D’Amboinische Rariteitkammer, 1705 and Thesaurus ImaginumPiscium Testaceorum, 1739.

Scheuchzer, Johann Jacob. Geestelyke Natuurkunde, 1728-1738. Fifteen vols. in six.

Volta, Giovanni S. Ittiolitologia Veronese del Museo Bozziano, Verona, 1796.

Willughby, Francis. De Historia Piscium Libri Quatuor, 1686.

Worm, Ole. Museum Wormianum, 1655. Both issues of the first edition, including Cuvier’s copy.

The Jahn Collection of Early Geoscience

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Melvin Jahn, Bibliophile

A Note on the Collector and His Library

Melvin Jahn (1938-2003) was the youngest and the last of the great Berkeley scientificbook collectors. It has often been noted that there is a certain contagion to book-collecting.Influential bibliographies, historic events or inspiring personalities can establish a vogue.Admiration, emulation and rivalry sustain it, but when the stimulus is withdrawn, or the circle ofenthusiasts is dispersed or dies off, the epidemic is over. At the University of California it ran forjust over a century.

The taste for scientific books was well established at Berkeley in the 1890’s, by the botanists E.L.Greene, W.L. Jepson, H.M. Hall and W.A. Setchell, each collecting within their specialty, from ataxonomic and historical point of view. The taste became a mania by the 1920’s, with the adventof two omnivorous collectors, Charles Atwood Kofoid and Herbert McLean Evans.

Kofoid (1865-1947), a zoologist, specialized in natural history, and by unrelenting accumulationdied with 80,000 or 100,000 volumes. They were donated to the University Library, althoughduplicates were sold, eventually enriching the Jahn Collection.

Evans (1882-1971), the discoverer of Vitamin E, by incessant ebb and flow, never had more thana few thousand volumes on hand at any given moment, but circulated some 20,000 books in thecourse of his career. Bridson and Jackson’s Naturalists’ Libraries lists sixteen catalogues from whichEvans’s books were recorded and dispersed between 1930 and 1975. Every leading Americanhistory of science library has at least a few volumes that once were his.

Still more influential was Evans’s 1934 exhibition catalogue of First editions of epochal achievementsin the history of science, listing 116 works. This small booklet, succinctly annotated, with its clearpurpose and manageable number of landmark publications, established for the first time thehumble scientific offprint as an object of bibliophilic pursuit. The catalogue contains in nuceeverything for which Dibner and Horblit are commonly acclaimed. Unlike the staid Kofoid, Evanswas an inspiring and flamboyant presence—a bookseller manqué. He clearly captivated the youngJahn in his student days at Berkeley in the late 1950’s, tempting him with dealers’ catalogues andeven passing on books from his library.1 Jahn’s simple and elegant sans-serif book-label—Ex Libris/Melvin Edward Jahn—is obviously inspired by Evans’s more elaborate bookplate. Here alone doesJahn use his full name (as never in scientific publications), echoing his mentor’s resonant triplet.

Jahn was a graduate student of paleontology under Charles L. Camp (1893-1975). His M.A. thesis(1963) was devoted to the fossil tigers and other carnivores of the La Brea tar-pits, a subject onwhich Camp had published years earlier. Camp was another of the great Berkeley book-collectors,with an enthusiasm for the complementary subjects of Western Americana and geology. He is bestknown for his revisions (1937 and 1953) of Henry Raup Wagner’s bibliography of The Plains andthe Rockies (1920-21), still known in its fourth, posthumous edition (1982) simply as “Wagner-Camp.” Professor Camp, too, supplied Jahn with books from his library.


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1 On July 3, 1961, Evans inscribed a copy of his Men and moments in the history of science (Seattle 1959) toJahn with these encouraging words: “To Melvin Edward Jahn with hearty congratulations on hisdetermination to collect treatises which have enlarged man’s knowledge and man’s horizon.” Coincidentally,July 3 was also the very day that Sothey’s of London auctioned off the scientific library of the Earl of Bute.And Jahn would later purchase six “treatises” from that sale.

Stimulated by such “ardent fellow enthusiasts” (as Evans once phrased his relationship to Jahn), itis little wonder that the disciple’s publications were overwhelmingly bibliographical. At the age of25, in collaboration with the Latinist Daniel J. Woolf, Jahn published his only book in the historyof science, The Lying Stones of Dr. Johann Bartholomew Adam Beringer (University of CaliforniaPress, 1963). This study of the most famous hoax in the history of paleontology took the form ofan extensively annotated translation of Beringer’s rare Lithographiae Wirceburgensis (1726),reproducing the engravings in which the gullible Würzburg professor published hundreds ofwildly improbable forged fossils. In his “Acknowledgments,” Jahn paid tribute to the endeavors ofhalf a dozen booksellers from whom he had obtained 17th and 18th century texts [still in thecollection]. His usual sources for antiquarian books included the firms of Bernard Quaritch Ltd.,Wheldon and Wesley, and Zeitlin & Ver Brugge. Jahn appropriately dedicated his book (in Latin)to Charles L. Camp.

Jahn’s extensive notes in The Lying Stones form a bibliographical history of the study of fossils,albeit in somewhat disconnected form. A glance at a list of Jahn’s own library reveals the extent towhich this masterly survey of Beringer’s sources was based on careful examination of his ownshelves, demonstrating yet again that there is rarely a substitute for the intimate familiarity bredby actual possession.

Jahn’s superb library of 208 titles (in 242 volumes) contains a remarkably comprehensivecollection of the monuments of early paleontology (1600-1800): the local inventories ofpetrifactions, the illustrated museum catalogues that record many a fossil for the first time, themagnificent illustrated folios on corals and shells, the English county histories in which fossilsmingle with arrowheads and urns, the travel books, the learned correspondence, the diluviantheology, and the earliest truly scientific monographs. Reflecting the state of paleontology in the17th and 18th centuries, many of the works encompass other scientific fields, includinggeography, comparative anatomy, zoology, mineralogy, and gemology.

Apart from The Lying Stones, Jahn published twelve articles, all but one in The Journal of the Societyfor the Bibliography of Natural History, between 1963 and 1975—studies of such notable earlypaleontologists as John Woodward, Johann Jacob Scheuchzer, and Edward Lhwyd. These too arebibliographical studies, based on Jahn’s own collections, which were essentially complete for eachauthor. His publications are still standard points of reference in spite of the passage of time. Evans’sdeath in 1971, followed by Camp’s in 1975, foreshadowed Jahn’s own withdrawal from the historyof science. He published nothing on the subject after 1975, and placed much of his splendidlibrary in storage, where it was only discovered after his death.

Jahn’s library is a period piece, from a vanished era of the recent past, a monument to what wasavailable in the bookshops forty years ago to a diligent scholar with a refined taste. The gaudilyrebound copies of antiquarian books so often seen at book fairs today are entirely absent. Jahn’scopies are in remarkable condition, almost all in original or contemporary bindings, many withinteresting or intriguing associations. The collection is not only pleasing to the eye. It is above allan exceptional assemblage of original source material that would be extraordinarily difficult, if notimpossible, to replicate today.


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The Meaning of Fossils and The Theory of the Earth:A Brief Survey of the Jahn Collection

Melvin Jahn’s mentor, Herbert McLean Evans, was fond of quoting the dictum of the physicistJames Clark Maxwell:

It is of great advantage to the student of any subject to read in the originalmemoirs on that subject, for science is always most completely assimilatedwhen it is found in its nascent state. Every student of science should, in fact, bean antiquary in his subject.

As a student of paleontology, Melvin Jahn evidently took these words to heart. He built up acollection that was remarkable for its scope. It mirrored his interests and inspired his scholarlywritings, which centered around man’s varied attempts to come to terms with Noah in thebroadest sense—to harmonize the fossil record with a dwindling scriptural authority on the eve ofthe modern world. Every shade of opinion from ovism and animalculism to Panspermia anddiluvianism is represented in the Jahn collection, as is every scale of investigation, fromSchwenkfeld’s detailed account of the fossils of Silesia (1601) to Johann Zahn’s mammoth surveyof the entire world of science, Specula physico-mathematico-historica (1696, folio with 61 plates),or the collected works in thirteen volumes of Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605), the renownedBolognese naturalist who introduced the word “Geologia” to science in its present sense. JohannB.A. Beringer, inevitably, was the nexus of Jahn’s research, not least because he offered so useful abibliographical guide to the “original memoirs” in their “nascent state.”

Beringer

The name of Jahn is most closely identified with the Beringer hoax—no history of geology canignore this famous episode, and Jahn’s publications are invariably the only point of reference in anauthor’s footnotes. In addition to The Lying Stones (1963), Jahn published three articles onBeringer, including the definitive statement (1972) on the bibliography of the LithographiaeWircebergiensis.2 His own collection contains fine copies of the two editions there described. In hisLithographiae, Beringer refers to several dozen eminent predecessors and authorities. Jahnidentified their scattered publications (see The Lying Stones, Appendix A. pp.111-24) and acquiredmany of these rare books for his library, including Lodovico Moscardo’s Note overo Memorie delmuseo de Lodovico Moscardo (1656), Karl Lang’s Tractatus de Origine Lapidum Figuratorum (1709),Micheli Mercati’s Metallotheca (1717), and Daniel Büttner’s Rudera Diluvii Testes (1710).

As a German, Beringer was well acquainted with the publications of his countrymen, whosecontributions to the seventeenth century study of fossils concentrated on the discoveries made ina particular locality, a style of scientific investigation still notable in the study of fossil man, whois always given an address—from Neanderthal to Olduvai. The Lying Stones (pp.166-68) describesa few of these regional catalogues. Jahn’s own collection includes George Anton Volkmann’s SilesiaSubterranea, (1720), George A. Helwing’s Lithographia Angerburgica, (1717), and Peter Wolfart’sHistoriae Naturalis Hassiae Inferioris, (1719).

In turn, Italian studies of paleontology of the time were influenced less by mining andchorography than by the Mediterranean sea. The peninsula’s lengthy coastline gave access tomarine shells of similar configuration whether discovered as fossils embedded in rock or as livingcreatures in the sea. (The understanding of extinct creatures required leaps of imagination that


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2 Jahn also contributed the entry on Beringer for the Dictionary of Scientific Biography (II, pp.15-16) and Jahnis cited as a major secondary reference in the entries on Karl Lang, Edward Lhwyd, and John Woodward.

were difficult in the absence of a conceptual framework—the world was not psychologicallyprepared for dinosaurs until the nineteenth century.) Jahn’s library includes a fine copy (incontemporary binding and with rare hand-colored plates) of Marsigli’s beautiful folio, Histoirephysique de la mer (1725), the pioneering work in oceanography, with geological ramifications thatwould have appealed to the collector. The Italians were the great accumulators of the seventeenthcentury; almost all of their investigations were documented not in theoretical works but in privatemuseum catalogues, often handsomely illustrated folios.

Museums

According to an author’s note (in 1969) Melvin Jahn was at work on “a projected series of articleson the history of museums.” None of these were published but Jahn had clearly laid thefoundations, in his usual comprehensive fashion, with an impressive assembly of key texts. Jahn’scollection includes some twenty rare museum catalogues, many of which figure in his survey ofliterature in The Lying Stones (pp.162-6). These include Georges Cuvier’s copy of Ole Worm’sfamous Museum Wormianum (1655).

When Jahn was collecting in the 1950’s and 60’s, the only reliable guide to these publications wasthe Glasgow bibliographer David Murray’s three-volume Museums, their history and their use(1904). In the last twenty years, however, there has been an astonishing growth of interest in everyramification of provenance, in cabinets of curiosities and early museology, a trend confirmed bythe establishment of the first specialist serial, Oxford University Press’s Journal of the history ofcollections. Such museum catalogues as Jahn was able to gather forty years ago are now very difficultto obtain, being much sought after by institutions endeavoring to support faculty research. Almostnone of them has been reprinted, although such spectacular folios as the Museum Richterianum(1743), perhaps the most beautiful of mineralogical books (and present here in one of five knownhand-colored copies) richly deserve reproduction in facsimile.

Topography

Closely allied to the museum catalogue as a source of early documentation of the fossil record isthe topographical survey, often similarly based on a private collection. The only catalogue of theYorkshire antiquary Ralph Thoresby’s famous museum, for instance, is contained in histopographical survey of Leeds, Ducatus Leodiensis (1715). Jahn not only owned this in its lavishenlarged folio re-edition (1816), but he also assembled the other great English and Scottish countytopographies of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, as discussed in The LyingStones (pp.170-1 and 178-81): Robert Sibbald’s Scotia illustrata (1684), Charles Leigh’s TheNatural History of Lancashire, Cheshire… (1700), John Morton’s The Natural History ofNorthampton-shire (1712), and two variant copies of Robert Plot’s The Natural History ofOxfordshire (1677). Plot was first keeper of the Ashmolean Museum.

Edward Lhwyd

Plot’s successor at the Ashmolean was the Welsh antiquary and naturalist Edward Lhwyd (1660-1709), succinctly characterized by Jahn (The Lying Stones, p.172) as “a member of the animalculistfaction of the preformationist movement, (and) perhaps the greatest proponent of the auraseminalis.” Lhwyd published (in an edition of only 120 copies, sponsored by a group of friendsthat included Sir Isaac Newton) the first work devoted solely to British fossils, LithophylaciiBritannici Ichnographia (1699), illustrating 267 specimens on 23 folding plates, including manyextinct trilobites, a common fossil in the Welsh borders where he was raised. Jahn publishedarticles on Lhwyd’s collections in the Ashmolean Museum, his correspondence and his


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bibliography. The Jahn collection, once again, contains the essential texts, including a presentationcopy of Lhywd’s folio Archeologia Britannica (1707).

John Woodward

Another of Jahn’s enthusiasms was John Woodward, “the Grand Protector of the UniversalDeluge” according to the skeptical Vallisnieri, and the first notable fossil collector to publish hisspeculations on the Theory of the Earth (see The Lying Stones, p.176-8). Melvin Jahn publishedthe definitive bibliography of Woodward’s An Essay towards a natural history of the earth in 1972,describing in 33 pages the many editions and translations of this influential work, several of whichare in the Jahn collection. Jahn also owned the posthumous catalogue of Woodward’s museum(1729): the collection was bequeathed to the University of Cambridge and is one of the very feworiginal collections to survive intact, and in its original cabinetry.

Johann Jakob Scheuchzer

Beringer cited Woodward’s Essay not in its original English but in the Latin translation (1704) byJ.J. Scheuchzer. Inevitably, Jahn became an expert on Scheuchzer too, publishing four articles: heremains the leading authority in English on the Swiss scientist. A projected sequel to The LyingStones, intended to contain an annotated translation of two of Scheuchzer’s works, never appeared,nor did Jahn publish the bio-bibliography announced in 1975. As usual, however, Jahn had all ofthe materials in his own library, including Scheuchzer’s Herbarium Diluvianum (or Herbarium ofthe Flood) from 1709, one of the earliest works on fossil plants—botany was the key to assigninga season to the Flood—with a magnificent evocation of the rising waters on the title-page. OtherScheuchzer publications in the collection range from the very rare pamphlet, Homo Diluvii Testis,(1726) to the massive fifteen-volume (in eight) illustrated history of nature in the Bible, GeestelykeNatuurkunde, (1728-39, text in Dutch).

The History of Paleontology and Geology

The foregoing notes have concentrated on Jahn’s personal scholarly enthusiasms, as reflected onhis shelves and recorded in his publications, but the collector was never an isolationist. The themesand personalities of his research were embedded in a larger historical matrix. A number of earlyworks on fossils in the collection were listed under “Beringer” but Jahn ranged far more widely.His collection, in fact, includes a reasonably full survey of the literature of geology andpaleontology from 1600 to 1800. Jahn owned a number of works by John Ray, the leading Britishnaturalist of the seventeenth century, an associate of all and a student of everything. EmbracingRay and his circle, Jahn collected the works of the British physician and naturalist Martin Lister,including his famous folio on shells, Historiae sive synopsis methodicae conchyliorum et tabularumanatomicarum (1770, second ed., corrected) illustrated with over 1000 copper-plates. Fellownaturalist Francis Willughby is represented by his De Historia Piscium Libri Quatuor (1686), thefirst large English work on ichthyology. An interest in fossils and stones naturally took Jahn intothe realms of mineralogy and gemology. The rare and important works present range fromAnselmus de Boodt’s Gemmarum et lapidum historia (1609) to Richard Kirwan’s Elements ofMineralogy (1784).

Appropriately, the collection is rounded off by the chief works of the Rev. William Buckland, theeccentric first reader in geology at the University of Oxford. His Reliquiae diluvianae (1823)hearkens back to the old Flood debate, while his Oxford inaugural address, Vindiciae Geologiae(1820) is a call to arms, heralding the era of specialization that was to transform the study of theevolution of the earth and its inhabitants.


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The Melvin E. Jahn Collection of Early Geoscience 1550-1850

The Birth of Modern Mineralogy

■ [1550] Agricola, Giorgius. De la generatione de le cose, che sotto la terra sono, e del’causede’loro effetti e nature, Lib.V. De la natura di quelle cose, che da la terra scorrono, Lib. III. De lanatura de le cose fossili, e che sotto la terra sui cauano, Lib. X. De le minere antiche e moderne, Lib. II.Il Bermanno, ò de le cose metallice, dialogo… Venice: Tramezzino, 1550.

8vo. [54], 467ff, [1]pp. With 22 ten-line historiated woodcut initials and onefull-page diagram of a cavern [S6v]. Tramezzino’s device printed on the title-page as well as on the recto of the last leaf. Contemporary signatures on title-page. Contemporary full vellum, bubbled and stained; small stain on edge offirst few leaves, otherwise a very good copy.

First Italian edition of a volume which includes “De la natura de cose fossili,” the “first handbookof modern systematic mineralogy.” This collection of five separate treatises includes the first workon physical geology, a treatise on subterranean waters and their medicinal properties, a survey ofclassical references to metals and mines, and, of course, comments about thenature of fossils. “Agricola parted from the general view of Aristotle that stones,metals, and gems had their origin in the influence of heavenly bodies… Instead helooked to natural causes, to the solution of minerals in liquids and theirprecipitation by gravity, heat, cold, and evaporation” (Dibner, Agricola, p.18). Inhis chapter on the birth of modern mineralogy, Adams devoted 13 pages to thiswork, the “first text book of mineralogy.” He called Agricola “one of the mostoutstanding figures in the history of the geological sciences, not only of his owntimes but of all time” (The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences,pp.183-195). Faul & Faul point out that in this volume Agricola made “a firstattempt at a comprehensive system of mineral classification and the first stepforward from the wild redundance and synonymy of ancient nomenclatures ofrocks and minerals. It was a point of departure for the development of mineralogy”(p.30). Cited by Beringer.3 First published in Basel, 1546. The only Italian editioncited by Graesse (I, 143) is the Venice, 1559 ed. Hoover, Bibliotheca De ReMetallica 12, this edition (“Agricola’s most important work… after De remetallica”). Sinkankas 35, citing only the 1546 edition and an Italian translation of 1612. Ward& Carozzi 30 (erroneously citing “467p.”). Dictionary of Scientific Biography, I, 77-79. Zittelpp.15-16. In 2001, the Freilich copy—the first copy at auction since 1974—sold for $6,000.


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3 In defense of his treatise on his newly discovered “fossils,” Lithographia Wirceburgensis (1726), JohannBeringer presented “a brief alphabetical synopsis of Lithographers [scientists studying stones], to whom I haveaccess among the other works of the Doctors in my library. The very names of such illustrious men shouldsuffice to brand the idleness of that avaricious and crude pack of academicians who attack Lithology as auseless pursuit.” In The Lying Stones of Dr. Beringer, Melvin Jahn provided a more detailed bibliographicalversion of this list (see his Appendix A), stating that Beringer’s “‘brief alphabetical synopsis of Lithographers’is in a class with the Grolier Club One-Hundred.” The Jahn collection includes many of these “Lithographic”titles—and we have identified the “Beringer One-Hundred” by noting “Cited by Beringer.”

Most Detailed Illustrated Mineralogical Book of 16th Cent.

■ [1598] Bauhin, Johann. Historia novi et admirabilis fontis balneique Bollensis in DucatuWirtembergico, ad Acidulus Goepingenses… Montébeliart: (Foillet), 1598.

4to. [8], 222; [22], 291, [6], [20]pp. With 221 woodcuts in text. The secondpart of this work—Liber Quartus, with a separate title-page with the imprint ofJacob Foillet and dated 1598—is bound before the first part. With the six-pagesupplement on fungi (“Paralipomena”). Ownership signature on title-pagedated (1623) and armorial bookplate of John, Earl of Bute mounted on versoof a4. Bound in later full polished calf, joints rubbed, small crack at base of rearjoint, old damp stain on front board and present (lightly) through text [dateprinted in error on spine: 1698]. Otherwise a good copy of a rare book with asignificant provenance.

First edition, second issue of this rare work on fossils, insects, and fruit—and actually the firstdetailed study of cultivated fruit. Ostensibly, this volume is a description of European mineral

waters and baths, based on a study of the springs at Bad Boll, andthe medical properties of such waters. But this book is also one ofthe earliest illustrated works on fossils and minerals, principallydrawn from specimens in Bauhin’s own large collection. “This work,inspired to some extent by Gesner’s De rerum fossilium (1565), is theonly other illustrated mineralogical book to be published in the 16thcentury” (Wilson, History of Mineral Collecting, p.36). “This was themost detailed work on the subject written in the sixteenth century,and contains a lengthy appendix that gives an intimation of Bauhin’sabilities as a naturalist. It consists of a series of illustrations, most offossil collections, that was probably inspired by Gesner’s De rerumfossilium. The most original were the illustrations of sixty varieties ofapples and thirty-nine of pears, all collected in the alpine region.These large and distinctive woodcuts show the value of illustrationfor depicting fine morphological distinctions” (Dictionary ofScientific Biography, I, 526). Bauhin (1541-1613), who had studiedfor a period under Conrad Gesner, established a few botanicalgardens and accompanied Gesner on frequent collecting expeditionsuntil Gesner’s death in 1565. “Like Gesner, he had developed a sideinterest in minerals and fossils, eventually building a personal

collection as an adjunct to his principal botanical researches, and using many specimens as thebasis for his illustrations in his eclectic 1598 study” (Wilson, p.36) Cited by Beringer. BM Nat.History I, 113 (cataloguing a copy bound in order but lacking the “Paralipomena” and the title-page for Liber Quartus). Murray, II, p.97 (noting that this work is based on Bauhin’s “largecollection of fossil shells”). Nissen, Die Botanische Buchillustration, 100. Ward & Carozzi, 142.

The rare first issue—of which few copies are known—has a portrait of Bauhin (1541-1613) onthe verso of the first title-page, but does not include the six-page illustrated supplement on fungi,“Paralipomena,” which is present here. This copy formerly belonged to John Stuart, third Earl ofBute (1713-1792), who once owned the finest mineral collection in England as well as a libraryof comparable renown. He served as George III’s tutor and then as his first Prime Minister. Booksfrom his library have been sold in a number of auctions, beginning in 1785. This copy waspurchased by Quaritch at Sotheby’s sale of the Earl’s scientific books on July 3-4, 1961 and thenshortly thereafter sold to Jahn.


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■ [1599-1667] Aldrovandi, Ulisse. [Opera Omnia] Bologna, 1599-1667.

Folios. Fourteen volumes bound in thirteen. In uniform contemporary fullvellum over boards, identical decorative design blind-stamped on covers of eachvolume; decorative gilt-stamped design on spine panels; with matching largeleather spine labels; bindings tight and in generally fine condition. Elaborateengraved title-pages in each value as well as thousands of woodcuts. Old dampstains in two volumes [Metallicum and Dendrologia] and marginal damp stainsin Serpentium, otherwise a clean and bright set. Nine of the volumes arefirst printings.

A complete set—rare as such—of a work designed by Aldrovandi (1522-1605) “as a whole to forman enormous illustrated encyclopedia of biology” (Garrison-Morton, Medical Bibliography, 290).Although Aldrovandi, the great Bolognese naturalist “is not identified with any revolutionarydiscoveries, his work as a teacher and as the author of volumes that constitute an irreplaceablecultural patrimony earns him a place among the fathers of modern science. Perhaps mostimportantly, he was among the first to attempt to free the natural sciences from the stiflinginfluence of the authority of textbooks, for which he substituted, as far as possible, direct studyand observation of the animal, vegetable, and mineral worlds” (Dictionary of Scientific Biography).Also see: George Sarton, The Appreciation of Ancient and Medieval Science During the Renaissance,1450-1600 (1955, pp.113-116); and especially Paula Findlen’s Possessing Nature: Museums,Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley, 1994).

THIS SET INCLUDES:

• Ornithologia, hoc est Avibus Historiae Libri XII. In three volumes: I, 1599; II, 1603; III, 1634. First printing of Volume I.

• De Reliquis Animalibus Exanguibus et de Piscibus et de Cetis,1606 [colophon, 1605]. First printing, with the rare portrait of Aldrovandi.

• De Quadrupedibus Solidipedibus, 1616. First printing.

• Quadrupedum omnium bisulcorum Historia, 1621. First printing.

• De Quadrupedibus Digitatis Viviparis, 1637. First printing.

• De Animalibus Insectis, 1638.

• De Piscibus Libri V e de Cetis Libri Unis, 1638

• Serpentium et Draconum, 1640 [colophon, 1639]. First printing.

• Monstrorum Historia; cum Paralipomenis Historiae Omnium Animalium, 1642 [two volumes bound as one]. First printing.

• Museum Metallicum, 1648. First printing. “Encyclopedic in scope” (Jahn, p.163). Sinkankas 72. Ward & Carozzi, 43 (noting, “Illustrated by hundreds of woodcuts”). Murray, II, p.77.

• Dendrologiae Naturalis scilicet Arborum Historiae Libri Duo,1668 [colophon, 1667]. First printing.


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Catalogue of the Fossils of Silesia

■ [1601] Schwenkfeld, Caspar. Stirpium et Fossilum Silesiae Catalogus. In quopraeter etymon natales, tempus; Natura et vires cum varijs experimentis assignantur…Liepzig: Alberti, 1601.

4to. [40], 407, [15]pp. Colophon dated 1600. Ornamental initials and head-and tail-pieces. Printer’s device on title-page. Browning throughout text.Herbert McLean Evans’s copy, with his bookplate (as well as Jahn’s) on the frontpaste-down. Also small sticker from Wheldon & Wesley. Seventeenth-centuryfull polished calf with decorative gilt-stamped spine and small title label; jointscracked but covers tight.

First edition. Early catalogue of the fossils in Silesia by Schwenkfeld (1563-1609), aphysician of Hirsberg who had studied under the botanist Caspar Bauhin. Sotheby’scatalogue for the Freilich Sale confused this author with the Reformation reformer of thesame name (1490-1561). Graesse VI, 323. Hoover, Bibliotheca De Re Metallica, 737.Purchased from Zeitlin & Ver Brugge, ca. 1963.

Famous Study of Gnostic Rites

■ [1605] Pignoria, Lorenzo Vetustissimae Tabulae Aeneae Sacris Aegyptiorum simulachriscoelatae accurata explicatio. Venice: Rampazetti, 1605.

4to. [12], 43ff + one large folding plate of Egyptian decorations engraved byJacobi Franci (13.5 x 18 in.) + five full-page plates of Egyptian decorations andhieroglyphics. Some woodcuts in text. Engraved view of Venice on title-page.Slight minor worming on margins of some leaves. Recased into later full“antiqued” leather with some worming on spine, chipped on edge of rear board.Ownership signature dated 1846 on ffep.

First edition. “A famous work in which Pignoria [Jesuit priest, 1571-1631] identifies the Egyptiandeities depicted on the Isiac Table, supposedly an ancient Egyptian bronze (or stone?) plaquewhich here is shown upon the folding engraved plates. This tablet is said to be in the TurinMuseum and was once in the possession of Cardinal Bembo. Some authorities speculate that itdescribes the rites of initiations into the cult of Isis and thatPignoria was the first antiquary to offer an explanation of itsmeaning. Of interest to the gemologist is the fact thatPignoria used antique engraved gems to exemplify ancientcustoms, mores, and rites which he then employed indeciphering the meaning of the tablet. He was particularlyinterested in the significance of Gnostic rites and customsand thus numerous examples of abraxas gems appear uponthe first plates at the end of the book” (Sinkankas 5137).This early work of egyptology influenced the thought ofAthanasius Kircher, the famous Jesuit collector and authorof books on Egyptian philosophy (among other topics).Brunet IV, 651. Reprinted in Frankfurt, 1608, andAmsterdam, 1669.


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■ [1607] Topsell, Edward. The Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes: describing the true andlively figure of every beast, with a discourse of their severall names, conditions, kindes,vertues… London: William Jaggard, 1607.

Folio. [42], 757, [1], [12]pp. Without A2 [a blank—Wood provides the samecollation]. Piece torn from I5. Lacks V2 and V5 [pp.219-20, 225-26]. Cornerof Eee1 torn. Some old stains. Numerous woodcuts throughout the text. Title-page (mounted on contemporary leaf ) with vignette of Gorgon.

BOUND WITH:

Topsell, Edward. The Histoire of Serpents, Or, The second booke of living creatures…London: William Jaggard, 1608.

[10], 315, [8]pp. Without A2 [a blank—Wood provides the same collation].Last leaf of Index torn with some loss of text. Vignette of Boa on title-page.Woodcuts throughout text. Signature of John Mathen, 1672, on blank rectofacing title-page. Lacks front and rear endpapers. Edges browned. Bound invery scuffed contemporary full calf, corners exposed, spine worn; contentsslightly shaken; typical condition for this popular work. Armorial bookplate ofSir Archibald Grant (1696-1778) of Monymoske mounted on inside frontcover and with Sir Archibald’s signature on the first title-page (as well as thesignature of Geo Read).

First editions of both works. Largely a translation of Book I of Gesner’s Historia Animalium, withadditions by Topsell. “‘Topsell reflected the credulity of his age, but his exhaustive account of theprevailing zoological traditions and beliefs give his work historical value.’ This book was the greatpicture book of the seventeenth century, and is consequently nearly always tattered, dog-eared andimperfect” (Wood, p.599, quoting Hazlitt). Nissen ZBI, 4145 and 4146.

■ [1609] de Boodt, Anselmus Boetius. Gemmarum et lapidum historia. Hanover:Wechel, 1609.

4to. [8], [12], 294 [i.e., 288—misnumbered from Ll2 on], [16]pp + twofolding tables. Old small ink hole on Pp4 (last leaf of Index); printer’s device onverso. Old damp stain on lower corner. Scattered foxing and some browning oftext. Later [eighteenth century?] full calf with decorative gilt-stamped spinepanels (pomegranate design); boards a little warped. Small bookseller’s ticket [IlPolifilo, Milano] on front paste-down.

First edition of a major early work on mineralogy and gemology, a “celebrated encyclopedicwork” (Sinkankas 778). Noted as the first attempt at the systematic description of minerals(Dictionary of Scientific Biography II, p.293). “This book, which appeared in the same year thatKepler discovered the law of planetary motion, is in many respects the most important lapidary ofthe seventeenth century and exerted a wide influence” (Adams, The Birth and Development of theGeological Sciences, p.161). De Boodt (ca. 1550-1632) was court physician to the Emperor RudolfII (1552-1612) and was employed to curate Rudolf ’s large mineral collection. “DeBoodt was apolyglot, an artist, and an enthusiastic mineral collector. He made many mineralogical field tripsinto Germany, Silesia and Bohemia collecting specimens. With Rudolf ’s vast collection at hisdisposal, he went on to write one of the most influential mineralogical works of the seventeenthcentury, Gemmarum et Lapidum Historia” (Wilson, The History of Mineral Collecting p.38). Murry,I, p.26. Ward & Carozzi, 251 (reproducing the title-page on p.115). The Freilich copy (2001) soldfor $10,800.


13

■ [1612] Scaliger, Julius Caesar. Exotericarum Exercitationum Liber XV. De Subtilitate, adHieronymum Cardanum… Frankfurt: C. Marinii, 1612.

8vo. [16], 1129 [i.e. 1140], [89]pp. Armorial bookplate of “C.W.G.V.N.” onfront paste-down; long note in a contemporary hand written on front and rearflyleaves. Contemporary full vellum with “IMS/1616” stamped on cover. Verytight copy.

A later edition of a famous work first published in 1557 in which Scaliger (1484-1558) dissectsand expounds upon the text De subtilitate (1550) by Girolamo Cardano (1501-1576)—includingCardano’s theories on chemistry, the origin of the earth, and the nature of minerals and stones.Anthony Grafton called this book, which was later used a text, “the most savage book review inthe bitter annals of literary invective” (Cardano’s Cosmos: The worlds and works of a Renaissanceastrologer, 1999, p.4). Ward & Carozzi 420 lists the Cardano text.

■ [1624] Croll, Oswald. La Royalle Chymie. Lyons: Drobet, 1624.

8vo. [7], 223; 210, [57]; 119, [31]pp. With engraved title-page. Contemporarylimp vellum, some stains on binding and in text; rear hinge splitting.

Rare first French edition of Croll’s classic Basilica Chemica (first publ. Frankfurt, 1608),described by the Dictionary of Scientific Biography as “the standard work oniatrochemistry.” Croll was an influential advocate of Paracelsus, and this work containsan exposition on his teachings, a treatise on materia medica in which Croll emphasizesthe chemical medicines, and a treatise on the Doctrine of Signatures (Traicté desSignatures), which assumes that medicinal plans and other sources of medicine bear somesymbol or sign of their value for medicine in their color, shape or other visible sign, bywhich God intends that they shall become known to those expert and wise in theinterpretation of these signs. Also see Jahn, The Lying Stones, p.169. Understandably, thiswork is cited by Beringer. Purchased from Zeitlin & Ver Brugge (ca. 1965).

Early Zoological Treatise

■ [1632] Jonston, Johann. Thaumatographia Naturalis, in decem classes divisa: in quibusAdmiranda: I. Coeli, II. Elementorum, III. Meteororum, IV. Fossilium, V. Plantarum, VI. Avium,VII. Quadrupedum, VIII. Exanguium, IX. Piscium, X. Hominis. Amsterdam: Blaeu, 1632.

24mo. [12], 501, [3]pp. Woodcut vignette on title-page, with some illustrated initials and decorative tailpieces. Contemporary full vellum, slightly yellowed;author and title penned on spine and on bottomfore-edge, otherwise very good.

First edition of Jonston’s first book, “a compilation of all thecontemporary zoological knowledge” (Garrison-Morton 287).Arranged in ten sections (with separate titles), with a sectionon fossils, gems and minerals. “The rare first edition of afamous treatise” (Wood p.409). Sinkankas 3277 (“not seen”).BM Nat. History p.538. Norman Library 1177. Ward &Carozzi, 1217. First published in English as An history of thewonderful things of nature, 1657.


14

■ [1633] Jonston, Johann. Thaumatographia Naturalis, in decem classes divisa: in quibusAdmiranda… Amsterdam: Jansson, 1633.

12mo. [6], 578, [2]pp. Decorative wood-cut on title-page and tail pieces. Smallmanuscript note on the author tipped to the edge of the title-page. Lacks freefront endpaper. Front hinge cracking; old worming in lower gutter from B2-K2(mostly a pin-hole). Contemporary full vellum, yellow and little wrinkled;author/title/date penned on spine.

Second edition. “In this very early (second) edition, Jonston acknowledges his indebtedness toAristotle and Galen” (Wood, p.409). Dictionary of Scientific Biography VII, pp.164-5. Sinkankas3279. Ward & Carozzi, 1218.

■ [1634] Pliny, the Elder. The historie of the world: Commonly called, the Natural historie of C.Plinius Secundus. London: Islip, 1634-35.

Folio. Two volumes bound as one. Volume I title-page dated 1635; Volume II,1634. [60], 614, [40]; [12], 632, [84]pp + advt leaf. Stains on Vol. I title-page.Occasional light old damp stain on edge. Contemporary full calf, scuffed; laterrebacking with decorative gilt stamping on spine panels; hinges reinforced. Avery solid copy.

Second edition (second issue) in English of Pliny’s Natural History, with the publisher’s“Advertisement” (regarding errors) printed on the leaf after the Index in Vol. II. “The work is anencyclopedic compilation of all that Pliny could discover about nature, natural objects,productions of nature, phenomena, and the things made from natural productions of the threekingdoms, much of it culled from previous writings that Pliny had access to but most of which arenow lost” (Sinkankas). The first English edition, also from Islip, was published in 1601.Translation by Philemon Holland. Hoover 649 (this ed.) Sinkankas 5166-67. Wood, p.521.Purchased from Wheldon & Wesley, 1966.

Wonderfully Illustrated Natural History

■ [1635] Nieremberg, Juan Eusebio. Historia Naturae,Maxime Peregrinae, Libris XVI. Distincta. In quibis rarissimanaturae arcana… etiam cum proprietatibus medicinalibisdescribuntur… Antwerp: Balthasar Moretus, Plantin Press, 1635.

Folio. [8], 502, [104]p. Title-page in red and black withpublisher’s engraved vignette. Decorative initials and tail-pieces plus 69 striking zoological and botanical woodcutsin text [engraved by Christoffel Jegher ]. Contemporary full sheep with repairsto cover, later rebacking with original backstrip laid down; original marbledend-papers. Large device of Plantin Press on verso of last leaf. Very good copy.

First edition. “A classic work of some value describing a medley of animals, plants, and minerals—some of them new to the zoological science of the day. The volume is becoming quite rare” (Woodp.493). “The greater part of this work relates to the natural history of Mexico, or New Spain. Italso contains some particulars relative to Mexico before the conquest” (Sabin 55268). Nieremberg,a Spanish Jesuit of German extraction, was professor of natural history at the Imperial College atMadrid. BM Nat. History III, p.1434. Hoover, Bibliotheca De Re Metallica, 612. Nissen ZBI,2974. Purchased from Quaritch, 1961.


15

Second and Third Editions of Famous Lapidiary

■ [1636] de Boodt, Anselmus Boetius. Gemmarum et lapidum historia. Leyden:Joannis Maire, 1636.

8vo. [8], 576, [19]pp + two folding tables. Numerous woodcuts in text. Slightworming in Dd3-Ee8 (pp.412-448) and Gg5-Kk8 (pp.473-528). Paper repairmade to bottom edge of Hh1 and Hh8. Later [eighteenth-century?] fullvellum over boards, red leather spine label; overall very good.

Second edition, revised and enlarged by Adrian Toll, professor of medicine at Leyden.Illustrations have been “considerably changed by being redrawn and re-engraved, usuallywith minor differences in detail but sometimes significantly changed” (Sinkankas 779).Includes illustrations of lapidiary’s tools and apparatus for cutting and polishingdiamonds, descriptions of machinery for cutting and drilling of precious stones, andhow to make imitation gems. Hoover, Bibliotheca De Re Metallica, 146 (this edition—Hoover did not have a copy of the first edition of 1609). Ward & Carozzi, 252.

■ [1647] de Boodt, Anselmus Boetius. Gemmarum et lapidum historia. Leyden: JoannisMaire, 1647 8vo. [8], 576, [22]pp + two folding tables. Numerous woodcuts in text (better cutsthan in earlier eds.)

BOUND WITH:

de Laet, Johann. De Gemmis et Lapidibus Libri Duo. Leyden: Maire, 1647.

8vo. [62], 210, [6]pp. Separate signatures from de Boodt’s text. Numerouswoodcuts in text. Signature of “I. Bornius”—probably Ignaz von Born, 1742-1791, the famous Hungarian mineralogist, see 1778—on the inside fly-leaf.Contemporary full vellum with overlapping fore-edges; leather spine label. Avery clean copy.

Third edition of Boodt (Sinkankas 781) bound with the first edition of De Laet’s treatise(Sinkankas 3747). “While Laet necessarily covers much of the same ground as De Boodt, he doesadd new material and corrects some of the errors and therefore lends credence to the view that hiswork was deliberately written as a supplement to the De Boodt edition of 1647, and especially in

view of the fact that the title of that edition refers to Laet’s work asan integral part thereof. However, F.D. Adams, Birth & Developmentof Geological Sciences (p.163) treats it as an independent work, callingit an important lapidary ‘written under the influence of De Boodt,’and ranking it with Thomas Nichol’s Lapidary, 1652. Whateverarguments may be advanced, it is true that Laet’s work appearsfrequently upon the market in separate form… and with nosuggestions that it is part of De Boodt” (Sinkankas 3747). De Laet’sbook includes a translation (in Latin and Greek, with commentary)of Theophrastus’s De Lapidibus (Sinkankas 6590). Adams (p.21)points out that the appearance of Theophrastus’s “Greek text with aLatin translation and commentary” by De Laet was only the secondprinting of this “interesting but fragmentary treatise” (the first in

Greek published by Aldus in Venice, 1496), and the first printing in Latin. Theophrastus (368-284 B.C.) had written the first treatise, now lost, on fossils; that work had an influence on Pliny.Hoover 499 (De Laet). Ward & Carozzi, 253 (Boodt) and 1307 (De Laet). Purchased by Quaritchat Sotheby’s sale of the Earl of Bute’s scientific books on July 3-4, 1961 (lot 71); later sold to Jahn.


16

Catalogue of the Count’s Cabinet

■ [1656] Moscardo, Ludovico. Note overo Memorie del museo de Ludovico Moscardo nobileveronese, academico filarmonico, dal medesimo descritte, et in tre libri distinte. Nel primi sidiscorre delle cose antiche, le quali in detto museo si trouano. Nel secondo delle pietre, minerali, e terre.Nel terzo de corali, conchiglie, animali, fruitti, e altre cose in quello contenute. Padua: PaoloFrambotti, 1656.

Folio. [20], 306, [13]pp. Engraved allegorical frontispiece; with113 engravings in text. Old damp stain in text. Contemporaryfull calf, stained around edges, recent leather rebacking withleather spine label.

First printing (the second was issued in Verona, 1672). Illustratedcatalogue of Count Moscardo’s natural history collection. “A celebratedand much-visited collection particularly rich in antiquarian objects wasthat of Ludovico Moscardo, a nobleman of Verona. The collectionincluded most of the earlier Calceolari collection… and was visited bysuch worthies as John Ray (in 1663), Gilbert Burney (in 1685), andMission (in 1687)… The catalogue is divided into three parts: Book Iconcerns artificial rarities, e.g., inscriptions, amulets, and statuary; BookII concerns minerals, rocks, earths and the like; while Book III describesliving animals and plants. The marginal notations of Moscardo’s sourcessuggest an extensive up-to-date library was at his disposal, althoughmuch of the classification is based upon the works of Pliny andDioscorides” (Jahn, The Lying Stones, pp.165-66). A second edition ofthis catalogue was printed in Verona in 1672. Cited by Beringer.Balsinger p331, noting that this “account and drawings of moreimportant pieces” in Moscardo’s museum is “somewhat rare” (actuallyr e p e a t i n g

Murray’s exact assessment). Grinke,From Wunderkammer to Museum, 23(1672 ed.). Murray, II, p.154.Nissen ZBI, 2898. Sinkankas4611. Wilson, The History ofMineral Collecting, p.218.


17

“The Renaissance witnessed arenewed interest in nature, and collections

of natural objects such as minerals, fossils, shells,feathers, dried plants, stuffed animals, which had been gathered

from many parts of the world, were displayed in the houses of richcollectors. These ‘cabinets’ were shown to important visitors and were

forerunners of our modern museums. Some collectors wrote detailedillustrated accounts of the holdings or catalogs while others hired curators

to do so. These catalogs were distributed to the curious or scientificallyinclined persons and are fundamental today for the understanding of

‘geological’ endeavors during that particular period, endeavors whichcontinued to expand well into the eighteenth century”

—Ward & Carozzi, Geology Emerging, p.7.

■ [1655] Worm, Ole. Museum Wormianum. Seu, Historia RerumRariorum, tam Naturalium, quam Artificialium, tam Domesticarum,quam Exoticarum, quae Hafniae Danorum in Aedibus Authorisservantur. Leyden: Ex Officina Elseviriorum, 1655.

Folio. [12], 389, [3]pp. With the folding engraved view ofWorm’s Museum (by B. Wingendorp) mounted on a stuband bound in as the frontispiece. With 139 woodcuts and13 engravings (two full-page) in text—including theillustration of the giant Auk. Without the engraved portraitof Worm. Contemporary marble end-papers. Contemporaryfull calf, scuffed, wear at spine ends; lower front jointcracked; upper and lower joint on rear cover cracked; oldstain along rear joint; decorative gilt-stamped spine panels with leather titlelabel. “Wormianum” written at top of front cover. Text very clean and bright.

First edition. “A catalogue of the famous collection of natural and artificial rarities belonging toOle Worm [Danish physician and collector, 1588-1654]… The Museum Wormianum was, for ahundred years after its publication, one of the most frequently cited references on fossils” (Jahn,The Lying Stones, p.163). “The splendid double-page view of the museum shows the actualarrangement of the specimens on open shelves with boxes and trays of shells, minerals, stones, rareearths and animal bones, the larger specimens on higher shelves mixed up with bronzes, antiquitiesand ethnographic objects, racks of spears and utensils, horns and antlers and stuffed animals hangon the wall and from the ceiling are suspended large fish, a polar bear and a Greenland kayak”(Grinke, 75). Arranged in four “books,” with the first devoted to fossils; the illustrations thereinare chiefly woodcuts after Jan de Laet’s 1647 edition of Boodt [see 1647]. Schepelern describesWorm “as the continuator of the traditions of the great excerptors of the 16th century, namelyGesner and Aldrovandi.” Worm’s catalogue, Schepelern observed, “has been written with apractical motive. It is a continuous well-argued narrative on nature based on the objects Wormowned… The somewhat overlooked foreword to the folio contains the pedagogical principleapplied by Worm in his teaching: to lead youth towards knowledge by direct observation and awayfrom hollow verbiage” (Museum Wormianum, 1977). And Balsinger commented, “The catalogueis a summary of the scientific opinion of the times, and a practical exposition of the scope and aimsof museology of the 17th century” (p.497). Murray, III, p.279. Nissen ZBI, 4473. Wood p.637.

■ [1655] Worm, Ole. Museum Wormianum. Leyden:Ludovicum & Danielem Elzeviros, 1655.

Folio. [12], 389, [3]pp. With the engraved frontispieceportrait of Worm (engraved by B. Wingendorp after Carolvan Mander), folding engraved view of Worm’s Museum(also by B. Wingendorp) bound before A1, 139 woodcutsand 13 engravings (two full-page) in text. Some foxing inlast two signatures otherwise a very clean copy.Contemporary full mottled calf with decorative gilt-stamped spine, some slight cracking on joints, but a verytight copy.

First edition with variant imprint. Georges Cuvier’s copy, from the Musée d’Histoire Naturelle,with small stamps from both on the title-page. Grinke 75, with this specific Elzevir imprint of “thisgreat folio catalogue,” but without the portrait of Dr. Worm. Norman Library 4473 (this imprint).Willaert, no. 772. Cited by Beringer. The Freilich copy sold for $11,400. Jahn purchased thiswonderful association copy from Quaritch in 1961.


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■ [1664] Major, Johann Daniel. Dissertatio epistolica de Cancris et Serpentibus Petrefactis…cui accessit Responsoria Dissertatio Historico-Medica Ejusdem Philippi Jacobi Sachs… De MirandaLapidum Natura. Jena: Fellgiebeli, 1664.

12mo. 110pp. Last leaf (G8), a blank, was not bound in. Title in red and black.Bound in modern three-quarter leather over marbled boards.

First edition. Major’s doctoral dissertation on petrified animals and the petrifaction process [itinvolved lots of salt], presented before Philipp Jacob Sachs, who then in turn presented his ownideas about the “miraculous stones of nature” with an overview of the literature on this topic [see1664, next page, for an example of Sach’s writings on natural history] Major (1636-1693) becamea professor of Medicine at Kiel and subsequently assembled a large natural history collection.Cited by Beringer as one of his sources. Murray, II, p.47 (cited as one of the works onmuseography); Murray quotes from this small work a number of times, and specifically praises the“wonderful catalogue of wonders collected” by Sachs and included in this book (p. 54 sqq.).In 1674, Major wrote “an influential early museological tract, Unvorgreiffliches Bedencken vonKunst- und Naturalien-Kammern insgemein” (Wilson, The History of Mineral Collecting, p.182).In that book Major was perhaps “the first to establish a theory on museum organization”(Balsinger p.322).

Settala Museum Catalogue

■ [1664] Terzago, Paolo Maria. Musaeum Septalianum. Tortona: Viola, 1664.

8vo. [8], 324, [2]pp + folding portrait of Manfredo Settala + engraved portraitof Manfredo’s father, Lodovico Settala [founder of the Settala mineralcollection] mounted [as issued?] on frontis leaf. Woodcut coat-of-arms printedon p.[240]. Contemporary full polished calf with decorative gilt-stamped spinepanels; old stain on covers and partially visible but lightly in text.

First printing of this catalogue of the large and varied collection of natural and artificial (e.g.,musical instruments, Chinese porcelain) objects, first established by Lodovico Settala (1552-1633). Not only was Lodovico “a noted physician, but he was also well-known as a philosopher, aman of letters, and a member of the Accademia degliInquieti. He accumulated numerous archeological relics,paintings, manuscripts and curiosities, which weredisplayed to visiting scholars. Upon his death, the libraryand the galleria were maintained by his son, Manfredo.Under the direction of Manfredo (1660-1630) theGalleria Settala flourished and expanded, particularly inthe direction of the physical sciences and the manualarts.” Eventually the Galleria Settala “served as a scientificresearch center” (Bedini, “The Evolution of ScienceMuseums,” in Technology and Culture, Winter, 1965,pp.14-15). Graesse (VI, 67) notes that a part of thiscollection was later incorporated into Georg Rumpf ’slibrary. Sinkankas 6570, noting “not seen” and adding “this book is famous for its speculation thatmeteorites may be fragments of the Moon.” Balsinger p.471. Murray, II, p.171. Wilson, TheHistory of Mineral Collecting, pp.39-40. An Italian translation was published in 1666; see Freilichcopy (which sold for $3,330). This copy was purchased at Sotheby’s sale of the Earl of Bute’sscientific books on July 3-4, 1961.


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The Curious Nature of Crabs—and Cabinets

■ [1665] Sachs Philip Jacob. Gammarologia, siveGammororum, vulgo Cancrorum consideratio physico-philogico-historico-medico-chymica, un qua PraeterGammarorum Singularem Naturam, Indolem et multivariumusum non minus reliquorum Crustatorum institutuiturTractatio. Frankfurt & Leipzig: Fellgibel, 1665.

8vo. [44], 216, 219-835, 854-962, [44]pp index +double-page engraved allegorical frontispiece + tenplates (nine folding). Collates complete. Title inred and black. Small decorative stamp “Ex. Bibl. adai Mar Magab” verso of title. Contemporary fullvellum, with “GWD/ 1666” stamped in black onthe front cover. Very good copy.

First printing. An early work on crustacea, including fossils, by Sachs (1627-1672), author ofseveral works on natural history and a member of the Academia Naturae Curiosorum. As the titlesuggests, Sachs approached the topic from many sides—physiological, philosophical, historical,medical, and chemical. The well-executed plates depict various species of crabs as well as somefossils—and even one plate of a Silesian child with crab feet. But this is also a major contemporarywork on museography, and Murray cites this “very curious” book often because Sachs “describesall the more important collections of his day, largely from personal knowledge” (I, p.21). Cited byBeringer. The detailed Index, bibliography, and errata—present here—are frequently lacking. BMNat. History IV, 1779. Murray, II, p.47. Nissen ZBI, 3545.

First History of the Royal Society

■ [1667] Sprat, Thomas et al. The History of the Royal-Society of London, for the improvingof natural knowledge. London: Printed by T.R. for J. Martyn and J. Allestry, 1667.

4to. [16], 438pp + [1] errata + two folding engraved plates + frontispiece ofarmorial design (leaf A). Contemporary polished calf, without front or rearpaste-downs; rear joint partially cracked. A very clean and bright copy.

First edition, without the Hollar frontispiece, which was “only inserted in a very few copies”(Duveen, Alchemica et chemica, p.558). “An eloquently written account of the nature,organization, work and aims of the recently founded [in 1662] Royal Society. The work representsthe Royal Society’s attempt to give itself a genuine British origin, exaggerating the influence ofFrancis Bacon and suppressing the importance of contributions from Continental scientists likeHaak and Mersenne. The work contains two contributions by Robert Hooke” (Norman LibraryII, 1989). Sprat was one of the original Fellows of the R.S. and later served as Bishop of Rochester.According to Rudwick, “The achievements of the Royal Society in the realm of physical sciencehave tended to obscure the wide range of interests of its Fellows, or, more seriously, to suggest thatoutside their mathematically inclined research they were merely indulging in sterile fact-collectingor dilettante dabbling in science. An indication of the inadequacy of that view is the fact that onone occasion when [Robert] Hooke wished to reassure the Society that its endeavors were notfutile, he actually chose the problem of fossils as a paradigm example of the fruits of knowledgeto be gained by following the ‘experimental’ method of enquiry” (p.53; our emphasis). NormanLibrary 1989. Purchased from Dawsons (London), 1963.


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The Meaning of Natural Curiosities

■ [1668] Welsch, Georg Hieronymus. Dissertatio Medico-Philosophica de Aegagropilis.Augsburg: Praetorii, 1668.

4to. Engraved title-page + [6], 71, [9]pp + three plates; engraved title-page +101, [23]pp + four plates. Second edition.

BOUND WITH:

Hecatosteae II. Observationum Physiomedicarum ad IllustremSocietatem Naturae Curiosorum in Germania. Augsburg: Goebel,1675.

4to. Engraved title-page + [8], [1], 130, [5]pp + 12 plates byMelchior Haffner; 69, [26]pp. Bound together in contemporaryfull vellum; a very good, clean volume.

Two rare works by Welsh (1624-1676). The first title is in the secondedition (first publ. 1660); the second work is in the first edition. In both,

Welsh makes observations and offers ideas about the nature and meaning of the physical world,especially relating to figured stones and minerals. Beringer cites the second title as one of hisreferences. BM Nat. History V, 2201, citing the 1660 edition of Dissertatio Medico-Philosophicade Aegagropilis.

Astonishing Fossils

■ [1669] Lachmund, Friderich. Oryctographia Hildesheimensis, siveAdmirandium Fossilium, Quae in Tractu Hildesheimensi reperiuntur,Descriptio iconibus illustrata cui addita sunt alia de calculis, de fontibus, etc.Hildesheim: Jacob Muller, 1669.

4to. [24], 80, [4]pp + one folding plate. Woodcuts on 23 pagesin text, some full page. Nine separate plates from anotherunrelated paleontological work of the same period laid inwithin blank leaves after the text. Old damp stain on edge of thetext; some text browning. Probably eighteenth-century fullpolished calf, with decorative gilt-stamped panels, with addedblank end-papers (paper ca. 1700).

First edition. Scarce descriptive treatise by Lachmund (1635-1676) onthe “astonishing fossils” found near the German city of Hildesheim,concluding with a four-page index on the nomenclature of minerals. Thework includes two introductory essays by other scientists: Johann DanielMajor [see 1664] and Friedrich von Hagen. “The Oryctographia containsmany charming woodcuts similar to those found in the earlier Lapidaries. Lachmund was aphysician of Osterwieck where, between 1673 and 1674, he described the hyobranchial apparatusof the swan and demonstrated that bats have tails. His position with regard to the origin of fossilswas uncertain, but it was somewhere between the succus lapidescens of Agricola and the spiritusplasticus of Kircher” (Jahn, The Lying Stones, p.181). Cited by Beringer. Balsinger p.659.


21

■ [1672] Sherley, Thomas. A Philosophical Essay, Declaring the Probable Causes, whenStones are Produced in the Great World. London: Cademan, 1672.

8vo. [16], 143pp. Small old worming in the lower gutter of the last 13 leaves.Contemporary full calf, bound without paste-downs, later re-hinged.

First edition. Shirley, Physician-in-Ordinary to Charles II, writes about the origin of stones,taking the position that there were “petrified seeds” for the mineral kingdom much as there wereorganic seeds for the plant kingdom. Representative of the thought of the period. See Adams,Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences, p.87.

■ [1673] Ray, John. Observations Topographical, Moral, & Physiological; Made in a Journeythrough part of the Low-Countries, Germany, Italy, and France: with a Catalogue of Plants not Nativeof England… London: Printed for John Martyn, 1673.

8vo. [15], 499, [8], 115pp + four plates (two folding).Armorial bookplate of [Archibald?] Rowle on front paste-down. Contemporary full calf with some gilt rules on covers,original leather spine label; small worm hole on the spine andslight wear on corners, otherwise a very nice copy in itsoriginal state.

First edition. Ray’s first-hand account of his tour of the Continent,accompanied by three other naturalists, including Francis Willughby,whose own narrative “A Voyage through a great part of Spain,” isprinted herein (pp.466-99). This volume also includes Ray’s separatelypaginated catalogue of European plants entitled Catalogus Stirpium inExteris Regionibus. Keynes, John Ray, 21. An early work by “perhapsthe greatest naturalist of the age” (Rudwick p.63). Norman Library1791. Ward & Carozzi, 1842. Wood p.529.

■ [1674] Boccone, Paolo. Recherches et Observations naturelles… Amsterdam: Jean Jansson àWaesberge, 1674.

8vo. [6], 328pp + engraved allegorical title-page + 15 plates (two folding).British Museum duplicate copy (1831 sale), with small BM stamp on verso oftitle and at bottom of last leaf (p.328). Untrimmed copy bound in modern halfmorocco leather over marbled boards.

First edition thus. An anthology of sorts of various tracts by Boccone, collected from some earlierseparate works first published in Paris between 1671 and 1673. Thirteen of the small engravedplates accompanying the text of this miscellany depict a variety of coral, marine fossils, figuredstones, and fossilized fish teeth; one of the folding plates shows an unrealistic version of theeruption of Mt. Etna. An early work by this prolific Italian botanist (1633-1714) who taught atthe Univ. of Padua and wrote a number of works about Mediterranean plant life. Cited byBeringer. Sinkankas 735 (citing 14 plates). Hoover, Bibliotheca De Re Metallica, 138 is a 1671printing of one of the portions (issued without plates). Graesse I, p.457, citing the 1672 Parisedition as well as this “Nouv. ed. augm.” issue.


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■ [1675] Redi, Francesco. Experimenta circa res diversas naturales, Speciatim illas. Quae exIndiis adferuntur. Amsterdam: Fris, 1675.

12mo. [2], 193, [15]; 111; [8], 72pp + 12 engraved plates (11 folding). Alsotwo full-page illustrations in text. Printer’s device on title-page. Lacks an extraengraved title-page. Contemporary full vellum with the title neatly penned onspine; a very clean copy with interesting little plates.

First Latin edition of Redi’s “experiments on diverse natural things, particularly those whichcome from the Indies,” a collection of four works by the “celebrated medical naturalist” (Woodp.530). In the main piece, Redi (1626-1698) writes about unusual objectsof nature, including fossils, “serpent stones,” mermaids (shown on oneplate), and starfish. The second work is devoted to his observations onsnakes (followed by two short letters). Redi’s pioneer work as anexperimenter and the creation of a “culture of experimentation” is treatedin detail by Paula Findlen (Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, andScientific Culture in Early Modern Italy, Chapter 5). BM Nat. History IV,p.1660. Nissen ZBI, 3322, wondering if a full complement of plates was 12or 14—perhaps having been confused by the two full-page text illustrationsnot numbered as plates.

■ [1676] Geissler, Elias. Disputatio Historico-Physica de Amphibiis. Leipzig: Hahn, 1676.

4to. [16]pp. Contemporary marbled wraps with title in manuscript on cover.Attractive illustrated bookplate of naturalist Dr. J.M.W. Baumann oninside cover.

First and only printing of a brief treatise by a German professor (1641-1723) who attempted toclassify all creatures who live in water—including ducks, hippos, frogs, certain insects, crabs,crocodiles, and turtles. Not in BM Nat. History.

Fossils in Settala’s Museum

■ [1676] Quirini, Giovanni. De Testaceis Fossilibus MusaeiSeptalliani. Venice: Valuasenis, 1676.

4to. 76pp. Vignette on title-page. Old damp stainthrough text. Presentation copy from Jacobus Grandius.Recent green morocco and green cloth boards.

First edition. Quirini’s description of the fossil shells in ManfredoSettala’s collection is followed by Grandius’s essay on the UniversalFlood and the relationship of Settala’s fossils to that event, DeVenitate Diluvii Universalis, & Testaceorum (pp.19-76). Murray, II,p.118. Ward & Carozzi, 1823 (under Quirini). Not listed in eitherBalsinger’s extensive thesis on cabinets of natural history or inWilson’s “Bibliography of Collection Catalogs.”


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Groundbreaking Study of Local Geology

■ [1677] P[lot], R[obert]. The Natural History of Oxfordshire, Being an Essay toward theNatural History of England. By R.P. Oxford: Printed at the Theatre, and are to be had there: andin London at Mr. S. Millers…, 1677.

Folio. [12], 358 + [1] errata, [10]pp Index + 16 engraved plates + one folding(21.5 x 19 in.) engraved map [some old repairs made at folds]. Large engravedvignette on title-page. Round stain at the bottom of the title-page. Old paperrepair made to tear on leaf A1; small tear and hole on Plate 10, tear on Plate11. Signature of George Weare Braikenridge, dated 1813, on front paste-down;contemporary note on free front end-paper. Original full calf boards, crackedand rubbed, with later period leather rebacking and red leather spine label.

First edition, first issue, with the author’s name only in initials and this statement printed at thebottom of the title page: “The price of sheets at the Press, nine shillings. To Subscribers, eightshillings.” “Dr. Robert Plot [1640-1696], afterwards Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, Professorof Chemistry at that Museum, Editor of the Philosophical Transactions, and finally HistoriographerRoyal, planned a Survey of England by counties, but only fulfilled it for Oxfordshire andStaffordshire. His work was unlike any of his predecessors’, in that his real interests were nothistorical, hardly antiquarian, least of all in the direction of family history, but—scientific. Thetitle of his work and its chapters are sufficient to show this. He belonged to the new scientificschool of which Robert Boyle was the chief exponent. The result is a singular medley of naturalphilosophy, palaeology, and the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms from man downward,with some diversions and dissertation; but the facts and phenomena described are of permanentvalue, though the author is credulous and inclined to believe in astrology”—Madan, Oxford Books,#3130, noting a press run of 750 copies. In his collation, Madan cites the last leaf as Bbb2,although this copy is Bbb1, with the word “Finis” atthe end [of the Index]. Plot presented his material inten chapters, with Chapter 5, “Of formed Stones”[fossils]. The chapter is notable as being the “earliestpublished account of a dinosaur bone.” Jahn believedstrongly that Plot’s book “deserves special mention, ifnot for its charming style or for its influence uponElias Ashmole (which persuaded him to establish themuseum bearing his name at Oxford), at least becauseit took firm exception to the more ‘progressive’ viewsconcerning the nature of fossils… Plot rejects both theuniversality of the Noachian Deluge and the opinionthat the deluge was responsible either for fossils or fortheir placement… He was succeeded on the one handby Woodward and Scheuchzer, who argued for theDeluge, and on the other by Edward Llwyd, whoadhered to the Libavian concept of the aura seminalis,or spermatic principle” (The Lying Stones, pp. 170-71).Geikie p.77, noting the “map and sixteen beautifulengraved plates.” Hoover 651 (1705 ed., with longnote, adding “Plot’s books are beautifully illustratedwith plates by the master engraver Michael Burghersand contain a wealth of information on coins, fossils,and much local history and lore”). Nissen ZBI, 3192.Ward & Carozzi, 1801.


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Plot’s Second Issue

■ [1677] Plot, Robert. The Natural History of Oxfordshire, Oxford: Printed at theTheatre, and are to be had there: and in London at Mr. Moses Pits…, [1677].

Folio. [12], 358pp, [1] errata, [10]pp Index + 16 engraved plates + one folding(21.5 x 19 in.) engraved map (repair made to tear). Old damp stain on upperedge and in lower corner throughout. Original full calf boards, worn andcracked, with later leather rebacking and leather spine label.

First edition, undated second issue, with author’s name spelled in full on the title-pageand with a slightly different imprint (and no date on title-page). Madan does not recordthis issue. Plot’s book, Gunther said, “was a most notable achievement whether judged bythe importance of its scientific contents, or the readable manner in which they werepresented, or the value of the illustrations of nearly a hundred fossils engraved by MichaelBurghers, the [Oxford] University chalcographer of the day” (Early Medicine and BiologicalScience, p.216). Cordeaux and Merry, A Bibliography of Oxfordshire (1955), no. 4.

Aldrovandi’s Museum

■ [1677] Legati, Lorenzo. Museo Cospiano annesso a quello del famoso Ulisse AldrovandiBologna: Giacomo Monti, 1677.

Folio. [24], 532pp + engraved portrait + folding engraved view of theAldrovandi’s Museum. With 96 small woodcuts through the text + a woodcutportrait of the dedicatee, Ferdinand III of Tuscany. Engraved chapter head- andtail-pieces. Title in red and black, with engraved vignette. Old damp stain ingutter. Contemporary full vellum, old stain partially visible, upper front jointcracked, exposing some cords but covers still attached.

First edition. Catalogue of the collection assembled by the famousBolognese naturalist. “The Cospi collection incorporated the earliermuseum of the great Bolognese polymath Ulisse Aldrovandi whodied in 1605, and the catalogue by Legati, Professor of Greek atBologna University, is sometimes regarded as forming a fourteenthvolume to Aldrovandi’s monumental series of folios on naturalhistory”—Grinke, From Wunderkammer to Museum, 35. Thecatalogue is arranged in five sections, including a section on fishes,shells, corals and fossils. Silvio Bedini remarked that “the Aldrovandimuseum was merged with that of an amateur physicist andmechanician named Senator Ferdinando Cospi of Bologna to formthe Museo Cospiano which was particularly popular with visitors onthe Continent” (“The Evolution of Science Museums,” inTechnology and Culture, Winter, 1965). Part of the novelty of visitingthe Museo Cospiano was the nature of its custodian—a nattilydressed dwarf, Sebastiano Biavati; the folding plate shows him busyat work, assisting Senator Cospi. Balsinger pp.303-309. Murray, II,p.193 (“ an excellent catalogue”). Nissen ZBI, 2436, Wilson, TheHistory of Mineral Collecting, p.209, erroneously citing a 1667edition as well as this actual 1677 one.


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Illustrated Study of Unicorns, Real & Mythic

■ [1678] Bartholin, Thomas. De Unicornu Observationes Novae. Amsterdam:Wetsten, 1678.

12mo. [14], 381, [15]pp + engraved frontispiece (by de Hooghe) + onefolding (5.25 x 12 in.) plate. With 22 text illustrations, including 19 full-page. Later half calf and marbled boards, joints rubbed.

Second edition, revised and enlarged by the author’s son, Caspar. First published inPadua in 1645, this second edition of a detailed study on the unicorn—inspired by thepresence of various fossilized horns—has more illustrations than the first edition andincludes the attractive folding plate of the decorative “unicorn” horn housed in thetreasury of St. Denis. Bartholin (1616-1680), a professor of anatomy in Copenhagenwith a passion for zoology, traveled throughout Europe, collecting specimens as well aslegends. While Murray (who cited this edition frequently) acknowledged that Bartholinwas “an excellent anatomist,” he thought the doctor was “too fond of monsters andother things strange and unusual” (I, p.195). BM Nat. History I, p.194. Dictionary ofScientific Biography I, pp.482-83. Graesse I, 302. Murray, II, p.101. Nissen ZBI, 244.

Early Illustrated British Natural History

■ [1678] Lister, Martin. Historiae Animalium Angliae, tres tractatus. Unus de araneis. Alter decochleis tum terrestribus, tum flaviatilibus. Tertius de cochleis marinis. London: John Martin, 1678.

4to. [8], 250pp + colophon + nine engraved folding plates (one of spiders andeight of mollusks). Contemporary leather and marbled boards with decorativegilt-stamped spine, slightly chipped at head, otherwise a fine, bright copy withhandsome engravings.

First edition. Lister’s first work, representative of his manyinterests in the field of natural history. The book is divided intofour sections: British spiders, land snails, fresh water and saltwatermollusks, and fossil shells. The section on fossils has a separatepreface, and all have individual title-pages. Lister (1638-1712)“denied the organic origin of fossil shells despite their slightresemblance to shells of living mollusks. Lister was aware that thissimilarity was only superficial and that no such species were alive”(Ward & Carozzi, p.13). “In spite of his absurd views on fossils,Lister did useful service by publishing figures of fossils and ofrecent marine animals in [this] volume” (Edwards, The EarlyHistory of Paleontology, p.25). As Keynes notes, “most of theengraved plates representing mollusks were used again in Lister’sHistoriae Conchyliorum (1685-92, 2d 1770). A 23-page Appendixwas published separately in 1681. BM Nat History IV, p.1155.Dictionary of Scientific Biography, VIII, pp.415-17. Keynes, MartinLister, 1. Nissen ZBI, 2527. Rudwick pp.61-63. Ward & Carozzi,1391 (not citing the Appendix). Wood p.438.


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Grew’s Famous Catalogue of Royal Society’s Collections

■ [1681] Grew, Nehemiah. Musaeum Regalis Societatis. Or a Catalogue and Description of theNatural and Artificial Rarities Belonging to the Royal Society and preserved at Gresham College.Whereunto is Subjoyned the Comparative Anatomy of Stomach and Guts. London: W. Rawlins, forthe Author, 1681.

Folio. [12], 386, [2], 43pp + frontispiece portrait + 31 leaves of plates (onefolding). Old damp stain in upper and lower gutter throughout, very light inplaces. Contemporary full calf, worn, with later leather rebacking;binding tight.

First edition of the “Great illustrated catalogue” of the Royal Society’s museum. Appended to themain catalogue is “Grew’s study of the stomach organs, which is the first zoological book to havethe term ‘comparative anatomy’ on the title-page, and also the first attempt to deal with onesystem of organs only by the comparative method” (Garrison-Morton 297). Nine of the platesdepict the entrails of various animals. Formally inaugurated in 1668, by 1681 the Society’scollection numbered “several thousand specimens, mostly zoological, mineralogical andanthropological, which had been received from 83 donors including Robert Boyle and SamuelPepys. The ‘mineral’ portion of the collection included approximately 250 fossils and 450 mineralspecimens… The catalog gives a good view of the extent of mineralogical knowledge in Englandthree centuries ago” (Wilson, “Nehemiah Grew’s Museum Regalis Societatis 1681” in TheMineralogical Record, Sept.-Oct. 1991). Jahn pointed out, “The descriptions accompanying thecatalogue are of special interest, as they reflect Grew’s wide acquaintance with contemporaryliterature and his tendency to attribute fossils to natural processes” (The Lying Stones, p.165).Grinke, From Wunderkammer to Museum, 64, noting that the Society’s museum was “a typicalWunderkammer collection with a strong emphasis on natural history and scientific curiosities.”Balsinger pp.184, noting “same general classification as the catalogue of Olaus Worm, with somerearragnement.” Murray, II, p.267. Nissen ZBI, 179. Norman Library, 945.

■ [1684] Sibbald, Robert. Scotia Illustrata; sive, Prodromus historiae naturalis in quo regionisnatura, incolarum ingenia & mores, morbi iisque medendi methodus, & medicina indigena assurateexplicantur… Edinburgh: Ex officina typographica Jacobi Kniblio et al, 1684.

Folio. [10], 15, [14], 102, [6]; [6], 114, [6]; 56, [4]pp + 20 illustrations on 22plates. Three parts in one volume, each with a separate title-page. Withillustrated head- and tail-pieces and as well as some illustrated initials.Contemporary full calf, scraped in places and repaired, some wear on corners,with expert later rebacking, red leather spine label. Very clean copy.

First edition. One of the earliest writers on the discovery of fossilsin Scotland. Murray called this the first “systematic account of thenatural history of Scotland” (I, p.153). Allibone notes that Sibbald(1611-1722), “an eminent naturalist and antiquary,… wasemployed more or less upon [writing this book] during twentyyears.” In the third section, Sibbald writes of animals as well asminerals, marine life, and fossils. Balsinger pp.453 lists the 1697catalogue of Sibbald’s natural history collection. Murray, III, p.175.Ward & Carozzi, 2050.


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One of the Finest Illustrated Works on Fish

■ [1686] Willughby, Francis. De Historia Piscium Libri Quatuor. Oxford: At theTheatre, 1686.

Folio. [8], 343, 30, [1], [11]pp + engraved title-page [dated 1685]+ 187engraved plates, all printed on recto only. Contemporary full paneled leatherwith expert period leather rebacking, blind-stamped spine panels and leatherspine label. A fine copy.

First edition. “The first large English work on ichthyology… showing every kind of fish” (Woodp.626). Published posthumously through the extraordinary labor of Willughby’s close friend, the

naturalist John Ray, who compiled the text from Willughby’s notes. “The scientificknowledge of Fishes may be said to have begun with the pioneer researches of Ray andWillughby in the seventeenth century. These zoologists, who were the first observersto distinguish definite ‘species’ in the organic world, laid the foundation of empiricaldetails regarding fishes in their famous Historia piscium” (Zittel p.410). Ray andWillughby (1635-1672) were both fellows of the RoyalSociety, and not surprising the Society had a hand inseeing this book (of 500 copies) through the press, witha number of its members actually underwriting thecosts of engraving the copperplates. In fact, most of theindividual plates have the name of the specific sponsor

etched in [e.g., Martin Lister], with the president of the Society,Samuel Pepys, being the major benefactor with 79 plates to his name.(Because of his largesse, the book is dedicated to Pepys.) Mostbenefactors, and the officers of the Society, were eventually paid offin copies of the book. Keynes devotes a chapter to the genesis andproduction of this book, and includes a list of all of the F.R.S.underwriters. Brunet V, 1458 (“assez rare”). Keynes, John Ray, 46.Norman Library 1793. Nissen 4417.

■ [1687] Geier, Johann Daniel. Schediasma, de Montibus Conchiferis ac GlossopetrisAlzeiensibus… Frankfurt & Leipzig: Oehrlingium, 1687.

4to. 22, [2]pp. Printer’s device on last leaf. Small ownership stamp of JohannesWalther [with crossed geological hammers] on bottom of title-page.

BOUND WITH:

Klinchamerus, Christian. De Natura Mineralium Exercitationes quinque… Jena: SamuelKrebs, 1662.

[28]pp. Small ownership stamp of Johannes Walther [with crossed geologicalhammers] on bottom of the title-page. Two tracts, bound together in recentgreen morocco and cloth boards.

First editions. Two separately published brief and quite scarce dissertations, one on fossilizedseashells and shark’s teeth (Geier), the other being a synopsis of some opinions regarding thenature of fossils, mostly as represented by Aristotle and Agricola. Geier’s tract “is especiallyimportant for containing a description of his discovery at Weinheim of the deposits of middleOligocene seasands, with the fossils in them, which was the earliest clue indicating that much ofEurope had once been submerged” (Henry Sotheran, Cat. 913, 1956).


28

■ [1690] Celius, George Henry. Cataclysmus Thuringiacus, vulgo Die Thüringische Sündfluth.Jena: Gollner, 1690.

8vo. 40pp. Recent red morocco and cloth boards. Small ownership stamp ofJohannes Walther [with crossed geological hammers] on bottom of title-page.

Only printing of Celius’s dissertation on evidence of the Great Flood in eastern Germany.

■ [1690] Burnet, Thomas. The Theory of the Earth: Containing an Account of the Origin ofthe Earth, The First Two Books… The Second Edition. London: Printed by R. Norton, 1691.Engraved frontispiece + [17], 327pp + two double-page maps. Nine engravings also in text.

BOUND WITH:

An Answer to the Late Exceptions made by Mr. Erasmus Warren against the Theory of theEarth. London: Printed by R. Norton, 1690. [1], 85, [1]p advt.

WITH:

The Theory of the Earth… The Last Two Books, London: Printed by R. North, 1690. Engravedfrontispiece + [13], 224pp.

WITH:

A Review of the Theory of the Earth, and of its Proofs: Especially in Reference to Scripture.London: Printed by R. Norton, 1690. [1], 52pp. Lacks rear paste-down.

Folio. Old damp stain on front paste-down and first leaf, otherwise a very cleancopy. Contemporary full leather, scuffed and a little scraped, some wear onspine end.

Second edition in English of Parts I and II of Burnet’s Telluris Theoria Sacra (first published inLatin in 1681, the first English published in 1684), with first printings of two other related works.All of these titles are primary works on the dilivuial theory of the earth. “Burnet [1635?-1715] is

known as the author of some books of considerable eloquence, andinteresting for their treatment of questions which have since beendiscussed by theologians and men of science… [In the Theory] Burnetmaintained that the earth resembled a gigantic egg; the shell was crushedat the deluge, the internal waters burst out, while the fragments of theshell formed the mountains, and at the same catastrophe the equator wasdiverted from its original coincidence with the ecliptic” (Dictionary ofNational Biography). Ward & Carozzi, 404 (1690 ed.), 406 (A Review ofthe Theory…), and 407 (An Answer…). Allibone commented that uponpublication of the Latin edition, “this work was met with great applauseand even Charles II forgot his dogs and ladies long enough to give it aninspection, which amply rewarded his pains.” Hoover, Bibliotheca De ReMetallica, 194, describing another such omnibus gathering of the sameworks and editions (although with an additional Burnet tract regardingWarren) and noting the “force” that Burnet’s work had on “early geologicalwriters.” Rudwick presents an excellent and succinct analysis of Burnet’swork and its indirect yet important influence on the debate about fossilsin the 17th century (pp.77-80).


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■ [1690] Warren, Erasmus. Geologia: or, a Discourse Concerning the Earth before the Deluge,Wherein the Form and Properties ascribed to it, In a book intituled The Theory of the Earth, AreExcepted against: And it is made appear, That the Dissolution of that Earth was not the Cause of theUniversal Flood. Also a New Explanation of that Flood is attempted. London: Chiswell, 1690.

4to. [16], 359, [1]pp. With four engravings in the text. Contemporary panelledcalf with blind-stamped decorations and small emblem of dog stamped in gilt onthe cover. Very good copy.

First edition. Suffolk churchman refutes Burnet’s Telluris Theoria Sacra; see Burnet’s rebuttal, AnAnswer to the Late Exceptions made by Mr. Erasmus Warren against the Theory of the Earth. (1690,above). Ward & Carozzi, 2290.

Four Rare Tracts on the Nature of Minerals

■ [1691] Ciampini, Giovanni. De Incombustibili Lino, sive Lapide AmiantoDeque illius filandi modo Epistolaris Dissertatio… Rome: Giannini, 1691.

15pp + one engraved plate.

BOUND WITH:

della Frata et Montalbano, Marco Antonio. Dell’Acque Minerali delRegno D’Vngheria. Venice: Albrizzo, 1687.

[6], 27pp. With half-title leaf. Title-page cropped closely at bottom.

WITH:

Baier, Johann. Oryktographia Norica, sive rerum fossilium et ad minerale regnum pertinentium, interritorio Norimbergensi ejusque vicinia observatum succinta descriptio… Nürnberg: Michalellis, 1708.

Extra engraved allegorical title-page, [8], 102pp + six folding engraved plates offossils and shells. BM Nat. History I, 85. Nissen ZBI, 189.

WITH:

Heusinger, Johann Michael. Dissertatio de noctiluca mercuriali sive de luce quam argentumvivum in tenebris fundit… [Giessen]: Muller, 1716.

[6], 50pp. Presentation inscription from the Praeses, Johann Georg Liebknecht[see under 1730], to Dr. [John] Woodward, penned at bottom of title-page.

First editions. Four rare tracts relating to minerals and fossils, originally issued separately but hereassembled together and bound in vellum-backed contemporary boards, titles penned neatly onspine. The main item of interest in this volume is Baier’s monograph on invertebrate fossils in thearea around Nuremberg, “one of the best works of the time” (Zittel p.21). As Jahn noted, Baier(1677-1735), a professor of anatomy and a president of the Academy of Naturae Curiosi,“considered the Mosaic Deluge responsible for fossils.” Cited by Beringer who thought (incorrectly)that Baier approved of the idea that fossils were the result of a “certain playfulness of Nature.” “Towhat other principle than to Nature playing artistically,”: Beringer argued, “can one ascribe thetexture and design” of certain seemingly unique fossils? Hoover, Bibliotheca De Re Metallica, 75 andWard & Carozzi, 97, both listing the Baier publication. Also Balsinger p.604. Della Frata etMontalbano was the author of an important early book on mining, Practica Minerale Trattato(1678). Maggs originally bought this copy at Sotheby’s sale of the Earl of Bute’s scientific books onJuly 3-4, 1961; Jahn subsequently purchased this collection from Zeitlin & Ver Brugge.


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■ [1692] Burnet, Thomas. Archaeologiae Philosophicae: sive, Doctrina antiqua de rerumoriginibus. London: Kettilby, 1692.

4to, [16], 358pp. One engraving in text (p.181). Contemporary full calf withsmall red leather spine label, expected wear on edges otherwise a verygood copy.

First edition. Treatise on the origin of the Earth and the Deluge. Burnet is said to have fallen outof favor after publishing this book. Burnet “professes in this [book] to reconcile his theory [of theEarth] with the first chapter of Genesis, which receives a nonliteral interpretation; and a ludicrousaccount of the conversation between Eve and the serpent gave great offense” (Dictionary ofNational Biography). Purchased from Quaritch.

Mention of Formed Stones Helps Sale of Book

■ [1692] Ray, John. Miscellaneous discourses concerning the dissolution and changes of theworld wherein the primitive chaos and creation, the general deluge, fountains, formed stones, sea-shellsfound in the earth… are largely discussed and examined. London: Smith, 1692.

8vo. [27], 259pp + 1p advts. With the Imprimatur leaf from Robert Southwell,President of the Royal Society. Contemporary full leather with later rebacking,some wear on edges otherwise a very good copy.

First edition. “In his discussion of the Noachian Deluge, Ray [1627-1705] revealed hisconsiderable knowledge of paleontology and geology. In the much-debated issue of ‘formed stones’(fossils), he supported the view that they were organic remains resulting from the divineintervention of the Flood” (Norman Library, 1795). Ray told his friend and scientific colleagueEdward Lhwyd that at the “importunity of some friends I haveinserted something concerning formed stones as an effect of theDeluge, I mean their Dispersion all over the Earth. Therefore youwill find all I have to say in opposition to their opinion, who holdthem to be primitive productions of Nature in imitation of shels[sic].” Ray was aware that Lhwyd planned on discussing this theoryin his future work Lithophylacii Britannici Ichnographica (1699), butRay’s friends “extorted” him to cover the topic “upon the pretence[sic] that no man who hath written heretofore concerning theDeluge hath made any mention of them [fossils] & therefore suchan addition, for the novity [sic] of the matter, would be acceptableto the curious, & give my book advantage of sale.” The publicationwas actually a financial success. Ray’s “chief importance inconnexion with the history of paleontology is that he was the firstto formulate a clear concept of the term ‘species,’ and paved the wayfor the advances in classification and nomenclature made in the next [18th] century” (Edwards,The Early History of Paleontology, p.33). Hoover, Bibliotheca De Re Metallica, 675, noting “Herewas ‘the ablest botanist and zoologist of his day’ entering the geological field and being tornbetween his ecclesiastical beliefs. Part of it all was the controversy over fossil remains or ‘formedstones’—were they remnants of actual living plants and animals or the works of some strangepower?” Faul & Faul pp.51-2. Keynes, John Ray, 81. Ward & Carozzi, 1843.


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■ [1693] Ray, John. Three Physico-Theological Discourses, Concerning I. The Primitive Chaos,and Creation of the World. II. The General Deluge, its Causes and Effects. III. The Dissolution of theWorld, and Future Conflagration… London: Smith, 1693.

8vo. [24], 406pp + 2pp advts + four engraved plates. Contemporary full calfwith later leather rebacking, old repair made to covers.

Second edition, corrected, of Ray’s Miscellaneous discourses, here extensively revised and enlargedby the author. The plates include one of ancient coins and three of fossil shells and fish. Keynes,John Ray, 82. Ward & Carozzi, 1844.

Dr. Woodward’s Famous Universal Solvent

■ [1695] Woodward, John. An Essay toward a Natural History of the Earth; and TerrestrialBodies, Especially Minerals; as also of the Sea, Rivers, and Springs. With an Account of the UniversalDeluge: and of the Effects that it had upon the Earth. London: Wilkin, 1695.

8vo. [16], 277pp + 2pp advt. Contemporary full paneled decorative calf (withstamping in blind on covers, later expert period rebacking, with leather spinelabel. Small cut on front cover, otherwise a fine copy.

First edition of one of the major works written by Woodward (1661-1727), Professor of Physickin Gresham College and Fellow of the Royal Society. “Like so much connected with Woodward,”Jahn observed, this book “aroused almost immediate controversy and a flurry of pamphlets both

for and against the Woodwardian system” (“A bibliographical history of JohnWoodward’s An essay toward a natural history of the Earth”). Much ofWoodward’s theory was inspired by close inspection of his own fossilcollection. While he believed, as few did at the time, that fossils were theremains of once-living plants and animals, Woodward argued that they werealso the relics of the Great Flood. In this book, Woodward “devoted fullattention to proving that fossils were laid down in the Deluge, and dismissedhis opposition [i.e., Edward Lhywd] in a manner fitting his disposition…Woodward introduced into his deluge theory a concept which was destinedfor much debate—being generally scorned by Edward Lhywd and hisfollowers and ‘refuted’ by Charles Leigh—the concept of the UniversalSolvent, which Woodward acknowledged to be a ‘Supernatural Power…[which] acted in this Manner with Design, and with the highest Wisdom”(The Lying Stones, pp.176-77). “Woodward’s Essay was valuable in its time forits methodology combining first-hand observation with a unified method ofobtaining information from distant sources, its strong argument in favor ofthe organic origin of fossils and its stimulation of interest in geologicalmatters”—Norman Library 2262. “An important figure in the history of

geology… This Essay had a wide effect in Great Britain and Europe” (Hoover, Bibliotheca De ReMetallica, 896), influencing the Swiss naturalist, Johann Jacob Scheuchzer. Cited by Beringer. BMNat. History V, 2359. Graesse VII, p.473. Ward & Carozzi, 2359.


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Pembroke’s Copy of Shell Book

■ [1696] Lister, Martin. Conchyliorum bivalvium utriusque aquae exercitatio anatomicatertia. Huic accedit Dissertatio medicinalis de calculo humano. London, 1696.

4to. xliii, 173, 51pp + 10 plates (four folding), numbered 0-9. Presentationinscription from Lister to the Earl of Pembroke [Thomas Herbert, 1656-1733]on verso of the front flyleaf. Title-page browned along edges from offsetting ofinside cover. Contemporary full leather with decorative gilt-stamped spine,slight chipping at spine ends otherwise a very good copy with fine plates.

First edition of this rare privately printed work. Includes, with separate pagination, Lister’sDissertatio Medicinalis de Calculo Humano. Jeffrey Carr notes that the main text (along with twoother books), “was intended as an anatomical supplement to the Historia sive Synopsis methodicaeconchyliorum [see 1770],” and that these books “were of greater scientific value” than the foliocollection of 1000+ illustrations. The delicate and detailed line work of the plates in this booksuggest that Lister’s wife, Anna, and daughter, Susanna may have drawn the originals and in factalso etched the plates, as they did for much of Lister’s mammoth work on shells, Historiae siveSynopsis methodicae conchyliorum et tabularum anatomicarum. Keynes, Martin Lister, 20, pointingout that the unsigned plates were “probably engraved by Anna and Susanna Lister.” BM Nat.History p.1696. Nissen ZBI, 2526. Regarding the Earl of Pembroke, “Maittaire, in his AnnalesTypographici, calls [Pembroke’s] library a ‘Bibliotheca exquisitissima’… Dibdin also states thatLord Pembroke spared no expense for books, and that he was ‘a collector of everything the mostprecious and rare in the book-way” (Fletcher, English Book Collectors, p.138). The Earl served asthe President of the Royal Society of London in 1689-90.

Danish Museum Catalogue

■ [1696] Jacobaeus, Oliger. Muséum Regium; Seu, Catalogus rerum tam naturalium quàmartificalium, quae in basilica bibliothecae augustissimi Daniae Norvegiaeq[ue] monarchae ChristianiQuinti Hafniae asservantur. Copenhagen: Schmetgen, 1696.

Folio. 201, [5]pp + engraved frontispiece + 36 (of 37) engraved plates, with thedouble-page Plate 15, but no Plate 16 bound in. Title in red and black withengraved vignette. Elaborately engraved chapter head-and tail-pieces as well asinitials. Ownership signatures (dated 1786 and 1832) on front flyleaf.Contemporary full calf, all edges rubbed, with decorative gilt-stamped spine,joints starting but covers tight; with contemporary marbled end-papers.

First edition of this elaborate catalogue of the RoyalMuseum of Natural History at Copenhagen. This largecollection of natural (e.g., shells and stones) andartificial (e.g., weapons, coins) was established byChristian V (1646-1699) of Denmark (and latercontinued by his successor, Frederick IV). Balsingerp.141 and 279-80. Brunet III, p.479. Murray, II,p.190.Nissen ZBI, 2081. Ward & Carozzi, 1676.Wilson, The History of Mineral Collecting, p.209, onlyciting 18 plates.


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Elephant Bones Controversy

■ [1696] Tentzel, Wilhelm Ernest. Epistola de Sceleto Elephantino Tonnae nuper effosso, adVirum toto orbe celeberrimum Antonium Magliabechium Serenissimi Magni Hetruaria DucisBibliothecarium et Concoliarium. Gotha: Litter Reyherian, [1696].

12mo. [32]pp. Recent three-quarter morocco and marbled boards. Fine copy.

First edition. Brief essay puzzling over the nature of fossil elephant bones and their relationshipto the Great Flood. Jahn cited this essay as “perhaps the best example” of the controversy over thenature of fossilized bones. “Wilhelm Ernest Tentzel, historiographer to the dukes of Saxony,entered into a controversy with the Medical Faculty at Gotha in 1696, in a cause célèbre regardingthe skeleton of an elephant. It was uncovered by workmen digging ‘pure white sand’ for export,near Tonna in Thuringia, in December, 1695. The Medical Faculty decided that the bonesrepresented either the skeleton of a fossil unicorn or a ‘mineral mimicking an animal production.’Tentzel maintained them to be ‘the real bones of an Elephant, but calcined by subterraneous heat,and in a great measure petrified.’ Tentzel did, however, consider these as having been deposited inthe Universal Deluge” (The Lying Stones, p.168). Zittel p.134, noting “The skeleton found atBurgtonna was one of the most famous discoveries, as it gave rise to a dispute between ErnstTentzel and the medical faculty in Gotha.” Cited by Beringer.

Survey of the Known World, With Fine Plates & Maps

■ [1696] Zahn, Johann. Specula Physico-Mathematico-Historica Notabilium ac MirabiliumSciendorum, in qua Mundi Mirabilis Oeconomia, nec non Mirifice Amplus, et Magnificus ejusdemadbite reconiditus… Nürnburg: Lochner, 1696.

Folio. Three books in one volume (each with separate signatures). [50], 448 +[7]pp + engraved portrait, engraved title-page + 25 plates, most double-page(including one folding plate and six folding tables; [14], 460, [8]pp + engravedportrait, engraved title-page + 24 plates (most double-page) and threefolding tables; [10], 248, [7]pp + engraved portrait, engraved title-page+ sixplates, and two folding tables. First title in red and black. Text brownedthroughout as usual. Contemporary full vellum, soiled, with title penned onspine; a tight copy.

First edition. Wide-ranging, detailed survey ofnatural history, astronomy, geophysics, geography, etc.Book I deals with astronomy and meteorology; Book IIcovers earthly matters—geology, minerals, botany,zoology; Book III concerns the realm of man,including anatomy and intelligence. This copy has atotal of three engraved frontispiece title-pages, threeengraved portraits, 12 double-page tables (not inpagination), and 55 maps and plates (most double-page). Cited by Beringer.


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■ [1699] Hartmann, Philipp Jacob. Succincta Succini Prussica historia et demonstratio.Berlin: Rüdiger, 1699.

8vo. [8], 48pp. Stapled into recent cloth and boards, staples (in blank margins)a little rusty.

First edition. Scarce essay on insects in amber; an abstract in English was published in thePhilosophical Transactions, 1749. This 48-page paper is a succinct “condensation” (in Sinkankas’sword) of Hartmann’s earlier Succini Prussici physica & civilis historia (1677), “the best and mostthorough work yet to appear on amber.” Sinkankas 2784, this edition; he also lists the 1677edition as well as a London issue (in Latin) of this 48-page work, also published in 1699.Hartmann (1648-1707) was a professor of history and medicine at Königsberg University. Ward& Carozzi (1012) citing the 1677 work.

First Book Devoted Solely to British Fossils

■ [1699] Lhwyd, Edward. Lithophylacii Britannici Ichnographia sive Lapidum aliorumqueFossilium Britannicorum singulari figura insignum… London: Ex officina M.C., 1699.

4to. [16], 139, [4]pp + 23 plates [bound between N2 and N3]. Two textwoodcuts. Armorial bookplate on front paste-down. Untrimmed copy boundin later eighteenth-century full polished calf with decorative gilt-stampedspines, slight wear at ends. Some spotting and soiling but overall a very goodcopy, with the Imprimatur leaf.

First edition. Rare. One of 120 copies printed. Twenty copies were reserved for Lhwyd, theremaining one hundred were distributed among the ten original subscribers (ten copies apiece)listed on the Imprimatur, including Martin Lister and Isaac Newton. “This work, which is amethodical catalogue of the figured fossils of the Ashmolean Museum, Lhwyd had expected theuniversity to print at its own expense, but this being refused, itwas printed at the expense of Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Hans Sloane,and a few others of Lhwyd’s learned friends” (DNB). “Chiefamong the catalogues of private and public museums publishedin England during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries”(Jahn, “A note on the editions of Edward Lhwyd’s LithophylaciiBritannici ichnographia”). Ward & Carozzi observed that in thiswork Lhwyd “proposed that most fossils had grown in situ fromthe same seed as the living organisms which they resembled; theseseeds had been swept up into the rocks through fissures” (p.13).The plates in this first printing of “the first illustrated catalogueof a public collection of fossils to be published in England” (DSBVII, p.307) are printed on larger paper than the accompanyingtext. Jahn reprinted the English translation of Lhwyd’s“celebrated” letter to John Ray “on the origin of marine fossils” which first appeared here (see TheLying Stones, pp.142-53). Murray, I, p.330. Nissen ZBI, 2499. Ward & Carozzi, 1382(reproducing the title-page on p.309). Hoover owned a copy of the 1760 edition, but not a copyof the rare first edition (Bibliotheca De Re Metallica, 53). Keynes, Martin Lister, 63, noting Lhwyd’sdedication of this study to Lister. Also see Jahn’s “The Old Ashmolean Museum and the LhwydCollection,” IN: Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, 4:5, 1966, pp.244-48. Cited by Beringer. Wheldon & Wesley originally bought this copy at Sotheby’s sale of the Earlof Bute’s scientific books on July 3-4, 1961.


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■ [1700] Leigh, Charles. The Natural History of Lancashire, Cheshire, and the Peak, inDerbyshire, with an Account of the British, Phoenician, Armenian, Greek, and Roman Antiquities inthose parts. Oxford, 1700.

Folio. [20], 4pp list of subscribers, [4], 196, [1]; [2], 97, [1]; 112, [35]ppWith engraved frontispiece portrait + 23 plates (including two plates ofcoat-of-arms, tear on bottom edge of one plate) + one folding coloredmap. Some spotting on frontispiece; contemporary signatures on title-page. Contemporary paneled calf, scraped on covers, wear on corners,with original red leather spine label; joints split but cords holding.Generally a very clean copy.

First edition. “Leigh’s opinions on the nature of fossils are not remarkable, exceptfor their conformity. Leigh accepted the universality of the Mosaic Deluge, but notWoodward’s concept of the waters of the flood (i.e., the Universal Solvent power ofthese waters)” (Jahn, The Lying Stones, p.179). Jahn also saw Leigh’s book as “typical

of the works of those ‘humble admirers of Natural History’… It is one of a great quantity oftreatises written by learned dilettantes in the eighteenth century.” Cited by Beringer. Nissen ZBI,2436. Ward & Carozzi, 1359.

■ [1702] Perrault, Claude. The Natural History of Animals: containing the anatomicaldescription of several creatures dissected by the Royal Academy of Science at Paris… London: Publishedby an order of council of the Royal Society; printed by R. Smith, 1702.

Folio. [6], 267, [15], 40pp + elaborate extra engraved title-page + 35 engravedplates. Old light damp stain partially visible on upper corner, overall very good.Contemporary full paneled calf, scuffed, with recent leather rebacking and redleather spine label.

Third edition in English of this classic work on comparative anatomy, with interesting platesshowing animals alive as well as with detached and detailed body parts. Earlier English editionswere 1688 and 1701. Nissen ZBI, 3125, citing the 1688 and 1701 English edition, but notthis 1702 issue.

■ [1703] Ray, John. Methodus Plantarum Emendata et Aucta. London [Amsterdam]: Smith &Walford, 1703.

8vo. [33], 202, [26]pp + engraved frontispiece portrait of Ray (by Faithorne) +two folding tables. Engraved bookplate of John Earl of Bute mounted on versoof title. Corner of title repaired. Contemporary full paneled calf, some scrapingand rubbing as expected otherwise a very good copy.

Second edition [?]—ostensibly a second edition of Ray’s MethodusPlanatrum Nova [1682], but as Keynes noted, “it is not really a secondedition… but is a new book based on the Historia Plantarum.” Because Raycould not find a London publisher for this edition, the Dutch botanist PeterHotton arranged for 1,100 copies to be printed in Amsterdam by Jansson& Waasberg. John Stuart, Earl of Bute, once Prime Minister, owned thefinest mineral collection in English. Keynes, John Ray, 42. Purchased fromQuaritch, 1962.


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■ [1704] Woodward, John. Specimen Geographiae Physicae quo agitur de terra, etcorporibus terrestribus speciatim mineralibus… Zurich: Gessner, 1704.

8vo. [14], 231, [21]pp. Contemporary full vellum with armorial lion (holdinga book) stamped on black on both covers; purple ink stamp of “StadtBibliothek/ Zurich” on verso of title and old shelf number of spine, otherwisea fine copy.

First Latin Edition of Woodward’s Essay toward a Natural History…,translated by his Swiss colleague, the naturalist Johann Jacob Scheuchzer.Scheuchzer’s encounter with Woodward’s original English text of this book(and then later his lengthy correspondence with the English scientist himself )had a profound influence on the Swiss virtuoso. Scheuchzer abandoned hisposition on the direct origin of fossils and embraced Woodward’s theory thatfossils were of organic origin, deposited in the strata by the waters of the GreatDeluge. Jahn, “A bibliographical history of John Woodward’s An essay towarda natural history of the Earth,” pp.193-94. Jahn did not own a copy of thisedition at time he wrote his bibliographical study. Cited by Beringer.

Rumpf ’s Famous Cabinet of Amboina

■ [1705] Rumpf, Georg Eberhard. D’Amboinische Rariteitkamer. Amsterdam: Halma, 1705.

Folio. 340, [43]pp + engraved title-page + engraved portrait + 60 engravedplates. Title in red and black with engraved vignette. With two engraved head-pieces and two tail-pieces. Contemporary full leather, rubbed with old stain onback cover; joints cracked, backstrip badly chipped. Small damp stain in gutterof last few leaves; despite the binding’s flaws, the text and plates are fine.

First edition. Descriptive catalogue of crustacea, mollusks, and minerals, and fossils of the Malayarchipelago; one of the first modern works on tropical fauna. “This rare folio is important becauseof its early descriptions and depiction of faunal (mainly marine) life in the Dutch East Indies (theMoluccas especially) at the end of the seventeenth century” (Wood, p.545). “The famous GeorgRumpf (1637-1706), a merchant and scholar who had lived and collected for many years in theDutch East Indies, brought his extensive Rariteitkamer back to Amsterdam upon his retirement;

it included minerals, metals, stones, and especiallyshells, all described and illustrated in a lavish catalog”(Wilson, The History of Mineral Collecting, p.115).Murray informs us that Rumpf was “a member of theAcademy of Naturae Curiosi, in which he took the title‘Plinius Indicus’” (I, p.147). Murray, III, p.146 (“anexcellent collection of shells”). Nissen ZBI, 3520. ShellBooks (1684-1912) and Shells: An Exhibition fromthe Collection of Wayne Harland (Broward CountyLibrary, 1998), #3. Ward & Carozzi, 1937, only citingthe 1743 re-issue.


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■ [1707] Lhwyd, Edward. Archaeologia Britannica, giving some account additional to what hasbeen hitherto publish’d, of the languages, histories and customs of the original inhabitants of GreatBritain: from collections and observations in travels through Wales, Cornwall, Bas-Bretagne, Ireland andScotland. Vol. I. Glossography [all published]. Oxford: Printed at the theater for the author, 1707.

Folio. [20], 312, 3; [110], 425-436, [4]pp. Armorial bookplate on front paste-down. Contemporary full polished calf with decorative spine. Joints cracked,exposing cords, but covers attached. Old damp stain along bottom (blank)edge. Presentation copy from Lhwyd to William Ball, 1708 (at bottom ofthe title-page).

First edition. Lhwyd’s last publication to appear in his lifetime, this book is “an elaboratecomparative etymology of the Celtic Languages, with Welsh, Irish, Cornish and Breton grammarsand dictionaries… The book was published by subscription [but] many of the subscribers weredissatisfied that the first volume should be purely philological, and no second volume appeared”(DNB). J.M. Edmonds stated that this volume “contained the first comparative study of the Celticlanguages and an Irish Gaelic dictionary. Thus, Lhwyd can be considered the founder ofcomparative Celtic philology” (Dictionary of Scientific Biography VIII, 307-08. Lowndesproclaimed it “an excellent work, of inconceivable use to our British antiquarians” (II, p.1386).The book was reprinted by the Irish University Press in 1971.

Isaac Newton Approves of This Book

■ [1708] Scheuchzer, Johann Jakob. Ouresiphoites Helviticus, sive, Itinera Alpina tria: inquibus incolae, animalia, plantae, montium altitudines barametricae, coaeli & soli temperies, aquaemedicatae, mineralia, metalla, lapides figurati, aliaque fossilia & quicquid insuper in natura, artibus& antiquitate… London: Henrici Clements, 1708.

Three volumes bound consecutively with a general title-page as well as a specialtitle-page for each Part. Engraved frontispiece portrait + frontispiece view + [8],57pp + 10 plates; folding frontispiece + [4], 72pp + 21 plates (one folding);frontispiece + [4], 22pp + 10 plates (one folding). Complete with a total of 45engraved plates. Contemporary full paneled calf, slightly scraped, front coverdetached (but present), but text and plates fine.

First edition. Major work by Scheuchzer shortlyafter he embraced the organic origin of fossils. In1704 Scheuchzer was elected a Fellow of theRoyal Society of London where he later had thisbook published. Scheuchzer dedicated thisvolume to the Society, “while the platesillustrating it were executed at the expense ofvarious fellows of the Society, including thepresident, Sir Isaac Newton (whose imprimaturappears on the title-page), Hans Sloane, DeanAldrich, Humphrey Wanley, etc.” (EncyclopediaBritannica, 11th ed.). In fact, Newtonunderwrote the cost of the three frontispieces(and is so acclaimed in their legend). Othergenerous Fellows included Martin Lister, Edmund Halley, Edward Lhwyd, and John Woodwardwith one plate each. This book, based upon the author’s frequent exploring expeditions over


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Switzerland, covers many topics, including botany, metallurgy, the movement of glaciers, as wellas barometrical and mineralogical observations. Melvin Jahn believed that “as a figure in thehistory of science, [Scheuchzer’s] contributions and worth have been vastly underrated.Scheuchzer possessed the restless intellect and pervasive sort of genius that characterized many ofthe virtuosi. His work in many areas is that of an innovator, but an innovator with a degree ofperception and a sense of intuitive method not often found” (Jahn, “Some notes on Dr.Scheuchzer and on Homo diluvii testis,” pp. 194-5). “Scheuchzer [1672-1733] was a prodigiouswriter and explorer amid the mountains of his native Switzerland, writing in geology, geophysics,natural sciences, and medicine and corresponding with some of the greatest scholars of his day…He had the honor of being one of the pioneers in correctly explaining the origin of fossils”(Hoover, De Re Metallica). Hoover, Bibliotheca De Re Metallica, 718. Cited by Beringer. NissenZBI, 3656. Ward & Carozzi, 1966 (reproducing the title-page on p.393). See Wilson, The Historyof Mineral Collecting, p.120. Purchased from Quaritch in 1961.

Scheuchzer’s Famous Fish Trial

■ [1708] Scheuchzer, Joannes Jakob. Piscium Querelae et Vindiciae Expositae a JohanneJacobo Scheuchzero… Zurich: Gesner, 1708.

4to. 36pp + five large folding plates [plus one extra plate of a fossil, from anunknown work of 1725, laid in]. Old damp stain on largest of the plates (9x23in.) other text and plates fine. BM Nat. History p.1830. Nissen ZBI, 3663.

BOUND WITH:

Klein, Jacob Theodor. Mantissa ichtyologica de sono et auditu piscium. Leipzig: Gledischium,1746. BM Nat. History p.992.

4to. [4], 30pp. Bound together in contemporary full mottled calf, originalmarbled end-papers, with armorial (French) bookplate dates 1809 (name“Monsieur Rousseau” penned on the verso of the large plate). Signature“Demigreu 1759” written on the rear flyleaf. Decorative gilt-stamped spine(floral design). Very good copy.

First edition of both works. Scheuchzer’s “great polemic” (Jahn) illustrated with fineplates of fossil fish from specimens in Scheuchzer’s own “museum.” Jahn calledScheuchzer’s brief work—whose title translates as The Grievances and Claims of theFishes—the “most remarkable” of all of the naturalist’s writings, “if not indeed amongthe whole scientific literature. The short treatise is a contrived attack upon scholars whoattributed fossils to any circumstances save the Universal Deluge. While much of thetract is devoted to anatomical descriptions of the several fossil fish found in Switzerland,an equal proportion is devoted to [a] pithy attack upon misguided scholars. The treatise deals witha trial of mankind by the fish, who were drowned in the Mosaic inundation because of man’swickedness, and indeed perished with him” (The Lying Stones, p.173). Rudwick suggested thatScheuchzer probably wrote this unusual book “to counter Karl Lang’s use of Lhwyd’s theory forthe interpretation of Swiss fossils” (p.87—see Lange, 1708]. Joseph Levine called Scheuchzer’sillustrated tract, “the most amazing of his many publications” (Dr. Woodward’s Shield, p.276). Azoologist with many diverse interests, Jacob Theodor Klein wrote about fossils in a number of hisworks, and in fact in 1740 he edited Scheuchzer’s posthumously published Sciagraphia lithologicacuriosa, seu lapidum nomenclator. Beringer cited the Scheuchzer work.


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■ [1708] Lange, Carl Nicolaus. Historia Lapidum Figuratorum Helvetiae Ejusque Viciniae, inQua non Solum Enarrantur Omnia eorum Genera, Species et Vires Aenesque Tabulis Repraesentantur,sed insuper adducuntur eorum Loca Nativa… Venice: Tomasini; Lucerne: Hautt & Halter, 1708.

4to. [28], 165pp + engraved frontispiece view of Lang’s geologicalcabinet [bound here before p.1] + 54 engraved plates.

BOUND WITH:

Appendix ad Historiam Lapidum figuratorum. [Einsiedeln]: MonasteryEinsedlensis, 1735. 12pp + one plate.

BOUND WITH:

Tractatus de Origine Lapidum Figuratorum in Quo diffuse disseritur,utrum nimirum sint Corpora Marina a Diluvio ad Montes Translata, et tractutemporis petrificata vel an a Seminio Quodam e Materia Lapidescente intraTerram generentur… Lucerne: Anna Felicitarus Hautt, 1709. [8], 80pp.

BOUND WITH:

Methodus Nova et Facilis Testacea Marina Pleraque, quae huc usque nobisnota sunt, un suas debitas et distinctas Classes, genera, et species distribuendi…Lucerne: Henrici Rennwardi Wyssing, 1722. xii, [1], 102, [2]pp.

4to. Bound together in contemporary full leather, scuffed and worn along theedges; bookplate of U.S. Geological Survey on paste-down and small USGSstamp on each title-page. Overall a tight copy with clean, attractive plates.

First editions. A collection of three separate and important works by Lange. The first text—Historia Lapidum—is the first printing of a scarce work explaining and illustrating the origins offossils, and it is accompanied by the rare, often-lacking Appendix. Lange [also spelled Lang, 1640-1741] was a physician at Lucerne who assembled his own “Museum Lucernense Langianum,”consisting, according to Wilson, “mainly of minerals and fossils, [and] was acquired by the NaturalHistory Museum in Lucerne in 1858 (History of Mineral Collecting p.179).The title frontispiece in the first work is a handsome view of Lange’s“cabinet.” Lange was an “enthusiastic support” (Zittel) of Lhwyd’s conceptof the direct origin of fossils and in these books wrote “that all fossils foundin rocks derived from seeds which had been transported by subterraneouscurrents and had been lifted through porous rocks to their present locationwhere they germinated under the stones” (Ward & Carozzi, p.13). As PatsyGerstner notes in DSB, Lang “was categorically opposed to the idea of[fossils’] organic origin and particularly argued against the conception ofthe diluvialists that fossils were animals destroyed in the Flood.”Understandably cited by Beringer, who referred constantly to Lange’swritings; also see Jahn, The Lying Stones, p.170, n.4. Dictionary of ScientificBiography VIII, p.4. Geikie p.98. Hoover, Bibliotheca De Re Metallica, 505(a copy with Historia Lapidum and Tractatus bound together). Nissen ZBI,2375 (Historia and the Appendix). Ward & Carozzi, 1321 (the first andthird titles bound together; with the title-page of Historia reproduced onp.289); 1322 (Tractus). Zittel p.18 (“good figures of fossils”). The Freilichsale offered the first title alone ($1300) and the second and third titlesbound together ($3600)


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■ [1709] Ray, John. The wisdom of God manifested in the works of the creation. London:Printed by J.B. for Benj. Walford, 1709.

8vo. [22]. 17-464pp + engraved frontispiece portrait. Lacks free front end-paper. Contemporary full panelled calf, stamped in blind, joints starting butstill a sturdy copy.

Fifth edition, corrected and enlarged, but in fact this is identical with the fourth edition of 1704;first published in 1691. “Certainly his most popular and influential achievement… It supplied thebackground for the thought of Gilbert White and indeed for the naturalists of three generations;it was imitated and extensively plagiarized by Paley in his famous Natural Theology; and morethan any other single work it initiated the true adventure of modern science, and is the ancestorof the Origin of Species” (Raven, John Ray, Naturalist, p.452). Keynes, John Ray, 63. Ward &Carozzi, 1845.

The Founder of Paleobotany

■ [1709] Scheuchzer, Johann Jacob. Herbarium Diluvianum Collectum a Johanne JacoboScheuchzero, Med. D… Zurich: Gesner, 1709.

Folio. 44pp + engraved title-page + 10 engraved plates. Contemporary fullmottled calf, front joint starting at top and bottom; old damp stain in lowergutter, otherwise a very good copy.

First edition. First catalogue of Scheuchzer’s “famous collection” written“with the intention to prove that the biblical deluge had transported fossilshells and other relics” (Ward & Carozzi, p.7-8). This work contains “a seriesof fourteen good plates of fossil plants, together with some corals and otherplant-like organisms” (Geikie p.100). Scheuchzer dedicated each plate to aspecific person, either a prominent citizen, a patron, or a fellow scientist. Forexample, Plate II is dedicated to the Most Illustrious Isaac Newton(President of the Royal Society) while Plate VI, the lovely illustration of afern fossil printed in sepia, is dedicated to the Celebrated Dr. JohnWoodward. “One of the earliest works devoted principally to impressions offossil plants, which figured largely in the Flood discussions of the time”(Edwards, The Early History of Paleontology, p.12). Scheuchzer is “consideredthe founder of paleobotany and his ‘Herbarium Diluvanium’ remained astandard work through the nineteenth century” (DSB). “Within the straitsof scriptural orthodoxy and in an intellectual climate still imbued withscholastic ideas, Scheuchzer’s diluvialist paleontology was comfortablyaccepted. He maintained a tremendous correspondence and was widelyquoted—to the point that Moro dubbed him ‘the Helvetic Pliny.’ Byaccepting Woodward’s contrived blend of physical and supernatural causesfor the Deluge, he effectively defused the arguments against the organic origin of fossils, andtherein lies his greatest contribution. The impetus he gave to the study of European paleontologyand paleobotany was felt for about century” (Faul & Faul, p.61). Cited by Beringer. BM Nat.History p.1830. Nissen BBI, 1752. Ward & Carozzi, 1967.


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Underground Riches of Saxony

■ [1709] Mylius, Gottlieb Friedrich. Memorabilium SaxonieSubterranea. Leipzig: Friedrich Groschussen, 1709-1718.

4to. Engraved allegorical frontispiece + [6], 80, [21]pp + 13engraved plates (many folding); 89pp + 16 engraved plates(many folding). Also with 16 engravings in text. Earlyownership mark (in ink) of Bibl. Snozzi [Scholtzii? ] on thefront paste-down. Armorial arms of publisher and book-collector Friederich Roth-Scholtz engraved on verso of title.First title in red and black. Browned throughout and smallholes in the upper margin of the frontispiece and first fourleaves, causing the loss of three letters. Contemporary fullvellum, very good.

First edition. First and second parts of a “valuable work on the rocks[including fossils] of the Thuringian district” (Zittel, p.34). “Splendidlyillustrated work on the underground riches of Saxony, but with mostspace given to fossils, dendritic stones, figured stones, etc… Rare”(Sinkankas 4680, who notes 15 plates in Part I and 14 plates in Part II).The many plates include a large folding plate of a fossil fern, printed in pale sepia. Mylius (1675-1726) was a German mineralogist who assembled a large mineral collection. He based this two-part work extensively on his collection, and once he had completed this study, Mylius prepared acatalogue of that collection and sold off his specimens (see Murray). Friedrich Roth-Scholtz(1687-1736) was a Nuremberg bookdealer who also assembled a collection of books on chemistryand science, and subsequently published a catalogue based on his collection, Bibliotheca chemica(1727). Cited by Beringer. Hoover, Bibliotheca De Re Metallica, 603. Murray, III, p.42, NissenZBI, 2950. Ward & Carozzi, 1634. Purchased from Quaritch, 1960.

The Fossils of Saxony

■ [1710] Büttner, Daniel S. Rudera Diluvii Testes, i.e. Zeichen und Zeugen der Sündfluth, InAnsehung des itzigen Zustandes unserer Erd- und Wasser-Kugel… Leipzig: Braunen, 1710.

4to. [8], 314], [20]pp + engraved allegorical frontispiece by C. Taucher + onefolding view of Querfurt + 31 plates (on 27 leaves, most folding), including aworld map. Title in red and black. Contemporary half vellum and marbledboards. Plates browned as usual, otherwise a very good copy.

First edition of a rare study of fossils in Saxony. The titletranslates as Treatise on the Deposits which are Evidence of theDeluge. “Büttner [1660-1719] was firmly convinced of thediluvial origin of fossils, and was strongly opposed to those whoattributed these ‘reliquiae diluviae’ to either the ‘lusus naturae’ orthe spermatic principle” (Jahn, The Lying Stones, p.178). Alsoincludes descriptions and illustrations of interesting plant andanimal fossils. Cited by Beringer. Nissen ZBI, 610a. Ward &Carozzi (379) only list Büttner’s 1714 work on fossil coral.Purchased from Zeitlin & Ver Brugge (ca. 1965).


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■ [1710] Ray, John. Historia Insectorum. London: Churchill, 1710.

4to. [15], 400pp. Ownership markings of Emanuel Mendes da Costa (Fellowof the Royal Society) on the inside flyleaf; illustrated bookplate of Wm. GeorgePether and small “Ex Libris/Oliver Howard” on front paste-down. Scatteredfoxing. Worn contemporary leather, later rebacking laying down orig.backstrip, front joint cracked, hinge reinforced; contemporary marbled end-papers. With some pencilled marginalia in text.

First edition, preceded by a 10-leaf tract in 1705. Ray died before he had completed thismanuscript and it was seen into press by the Royal Society which “resolved to print the materialas it stood and without figures [plates]—Keynes, John Ray, 104. Ray began this work by usingnotes left by Francis Willughby. Emanual Mendes da Costa (1717-1791), the foreign secretary ofthe Royal Society, noted on the flyleaf that he purchased this copy at the auction of the library ofMartin Folkes in 1756. Mendes da Costa was a professional mineralogist who was also veryinterested in fossils—see his A Natural History of Fossils [1757]. In his life-time, Martin Folkes(1690-1754), “the eminent antiquary and scientist” assembled a large library “very rich in workson natural history,” which was then sold at auction (Cf. Fletcher, English Book Collectors, pp.195-7). A nice association copy of a very scarce book by the “father of British naturalism.”

Fine Copy of Morton’s Natural History

■ [1712] Morton, John. The Natural History of Northampton-shire; with Some Account of theAntiquities. To which is Annex’d a Transcription of Doomsday-Book, so far as it relates to That Country.London: Knaplock and Wilkin, 1712.

Folio. iv, 551, 46, [10]pp + 14 plates andone folding (21.5 x 24 in.) map, expertrepair made to tear. Armorial bookplate ofJoseph Neeld [of Fulham, Middlesex] onthe front paste-down. Contemporary halfred morocco over marbled boards, withdecorative gilt-stamped spine and withhandsome marbled endpapers. A fine,bright copy.

First edition. Morton was Rector of Oxendon anda Fellow of the Royal Society. “A work of remarkableinsight… Morton recognized the organic nature offossils but due to his religious persuasions attributedthem to the Deluge… The last great diluvialist [heis] by far the most representative. He is notrestricted to a single opinion regarding the origin offossils, and in this he is more truly representative of the times” (Jahn, The Lying Stones, pp.178-79). “A work of very considerable industry, written on Dr. Plot’s method and on Dr. Woodward’shypothesis” (contemporary review, quoted by Allibone). Handsome plates of fossils and shells. Anearlier owner of this copy, Joseph Neeld (1789-1856), had a assembled a fine and extensive mineralcollection of more than 3,600 specimens that had remained intact until recent years. Dictionaryof Scientific Biography IX, p.539. Nissen ZBI, 2895.


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Dr. Woodward’s “Roman” Shield

■ [1713] Dodwell, Henry. De Parma Equestri Woodwardiana Dissertatio. Oxford: TheTheatre, 1713.

8vo. xviii, 150pp + one folding plate. Also with 19 engravings in the text. Olddamp stain in text. Untrimmed and largely unopened copy in later half leatherand marbled boards, joints starting, old stain on cover.

First edition. A book with its own complicated history.Ostensibly it is a paean to Rev. Dodwell as well as Dodwell’sposthumously published study of Dr. Woodward’s famous“Roman” shield (nicely illustrated here with a folding plateby Oxford engraver Michael Burghers), compiled andpublished by Dodwell’s former student, Thomas Hearne.Only 240 copies were printed but the work was “officiallysuppressed after only forty-three copies had been distributedto the subscribers” (Levine) because of a now-quite obscurereligious slight. Joseph Levine sifts through it all and makessense of it in his heavily researched Dr Woodward’s Shield:History, Science, and Satire in Augustan England (Univ. ofCalifornia Press, 1977). It turns out that the Doctor’s ancientshield was a sixteenth-century fake. Levine draws someinteresting parallels between the authenticity of this “relic”and two other contemporary events: Dr. Beringer’s Stonesand Dr. Scheuchzer’s Antediluvian Man [see Levine’schapter, “Fakes and the Progress of Modern Scholarship”].

Murray even discusses Woodward’s “curious iron shield” which “gave rise to a storm of controversyand many personalities” (I, p.120). Appended to Dodwell’s wildly inaccurate historical discourseis Thomas Neal’s Collegiorum scholarumque publicarum Academiae Oxoniensis, pp.[115]-150, with19 engravings printed in the text [continuous signatures]. Brunet II, 787.

■ [1713] Ray, John. Synoposis methodica avium et piscium; opusposthumum… London: Innys, 1713.

8vo. [6], 198, [20], 166, [12]pp + 2pp advts. + four foldingplates (two of birds, two of fish). Derham’s Address, printed on[O]6, placed by binder after the first sub-title. Contemporaryfull panelled calf, stamped in blind, expert rebacking withoriginal backstrip.

First edition. “This classic treatise completes (with the SynopsisQuadrupedum et Serpentini) the author’s contributions to vertebratezoology, a series that should form part of every first-class library on naturalhistory” (Wood, p.529). Ray had completed this work in 1694 but it wasstill languishing, unpublished, at the printers when he died in 1705.However, in 1711, it was discovered “among a great parcel of papers” (Keynes) in the formerprinters’ shop and seen through the press by Mr. Innys. Keynes, John Ray, 105. Nissen ZBI, 1797.


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■ [1716] Lochner, Michael F. Rariora Musei Besleriani quae olim Basilius et M. R. Beslericollegerunt, aenesique tabulis ad vivum incisa evulgarunt… Nürnburg, 1716.

Folio. [24], 112pp + 40 folding plates. Title in red and black. Large old dampstaining throughout, although mostly just touching the corner of most plates.Contemporary vellum spine with original plain boards (orig. vellum removed);old damp stain on cover. Leipzig University Library stamp (1882) on title-page.

First edition. Catalogue of the famous Besler natural history collection, first assembled by theGerman apothecary Basil Besler (1561-1629); upon his death, his nephew Michael Rupert Besler(1607-1661) “inherited the marvelous cabinet of rarities” (Wilson, The History of MineralCollecting p.160; p.204). Nissen ZBI, 348 (under Besler, Michael). Balsinger pp.691-92. Murray,II, p.117. The Freilich copy (in full morocco) sold for $13,200.

Scheuchzer’s Flood-Museum Catalogue

■ [1716] Scheuchzer, Johann Jacob. Museum Diluvianum. Zurich:Bodmer, 1716.

8vo. [12], 106, [4]pp + frontispiece engraving. Disbound yet untrimmedcopy, otherwise fine.

First printing of this rare Scheuchzer work in which the famous Swiss naturalistcatalogues the hundreds of fossils in his “Oryctophylacium”, arranged by type.Wonderful frontispiece depicts Scheuchzer probing a pile of shells with his canewhile behind him, high up above on a mountain top, rests Noah’s Ark—which wasacknowledged as “the most complete Museum of Natural History that the worldhas ever seen” (Murray, I, p.2). Scheuchzer’s collection certainly ranks as a majorprivate natural history museum of the time, and it is cited by Murray (III, p.163,)who notes that Scheuchzer dedicated this work to Sir Hans Sloane. Balsinger,however, does not mention it. BM Nat. History p.1831. Ward & Carozzi, 1696.

■ [1717] Helwing, Georg Andreas. Lithographia Angerburgica, sive Lapidum et Fossilium, InDistrictu Angerburgensi et ejus vicinia… Regiomonti: Johannis Stelteri, 1717.

4to. [14], 96, [13]pp + one copperplate view of Angerberg + 11 plates of fossils.Title in red and black, with small old stamp of “Museum D’Hist. Natr.” withsmall withdrawn stamp (in French) in blank area. Contemporary polishedmottled calf with decorative gilt-stamped spine, marbled end-papers. Slight off-setting on edge of title, otherwise a fine copy.

First edition of Part I of this illustrated study of fossils and figuredstones in the area around Angerberg; Part II of Helwing’s study wasissued separately in Leipzig in 1720. Jahn takes the author to taskfor being “somewhat vague” on his position regarding the origin ofpetrifications (The Lying Stones, pp.171-2). Helwing does, however,takes the position that glossopetri are rightfully sharks’ teeth and notthe tongues of serpents. Cited by Beringer. Hoover, Bibliotheca DeRe Metallica, 398. Nissen ZBI, 1884. Ward & Carozzi, 1036.


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■ [1717] Mercati, Michele. Metallotheca. Opus Posthumum, Auctoritate, &Munificentia Clementis Undecimi Pontificis Maximi E tenebris in lucem eductum;Opera autem & studio Johannis Mariae Lancisii Archiatri Pontificii Illustratum. Rome:Jo. Mariae Salvioni, 1717.

Folio. lxiv, 378, [13] + 1p errata + 1p colophon (with engraved vignette).With engraved title-page in red and black, an engraved portrait of PopeClement XI, engraved portrait of Mercati (after a painting by Tintoretto) +engraved allegorical plate describing the collection + double-page engravedview of the Museum + one double-page view of an open-pit sulphur mine +10 full-page illustrated section titles [illustrations based upon Mercati’sspecimen cabinets] + 129 text engravings + four engraved plates (inpagination). Collates complete. Contemporary full vellum with green titlelabel, some spotting on covers, otherwise a fine, bright copy.

First edition, first issue, of this classic work on fossils, minerals, and gems, being afinely illustrated catalogue of the Vatican mineral collection, The catalogue was inmanuscript when Mercati died in 1593 and was lost until 1717 when it was

discovered and prepared for publication “in a smallnumber of copies” (Wilson) by Giovanni Maria Lancisi (1654-1720), physician to Pope Clement XI, with notes by Pietro Assalti.“As a naturalist Mercati’s greatest interest lay in collecting mineralsand fossils; this collection later formed the basis of the work that hasmade him famous: Metallotheca. Mercati was a good mineralogistand one of the founders of paleontology… Mercati’s book isillustrated by beautiful copper engravings which, with themanuscript of the work, were rediscovered by Carlo Roberti Dati”(Dictionary of Scientific Biography IX, p.309). This sumptuouscatalogue, John Sinkankas observed, “reflects the state of knowledgeextant at the time and therefore includes objects of presumed magicalor medicinal virtue as well as those which are correctly identified and

described. The plates can scarcely be equalled for fidelity to originals and the exquisite careemployed in their engraving and printing” (Sinkankas 4390). James Parkinson also believed that“the notes of Lancisius, and the figures, which are executed in a very masterly manner, and conveyvery accurate ideas of the bodies they represent, render the work of value” (Organic Remains of theFormer World, I, p.21). Jahn commented especially on the work’s “excellent engravings,” which arevery well printed and registered. Balsinger pp.718-19. Hoover, Bibliotheca De Re Metallica, 581.Murray, II, p.22. Wilson, Mineral Collecting, pp.32-34. The Freilich copy sold for $14,400.

■ [1718] Ray, John. Philosophical Letters between the late learned Mr. Ray and several of hisingenious correspondents, natives and foreigners: to which are added those of Francis WillughbyEsq: the whole consisting of many curious discoveries and improvements in the history of quadrupeds,birds, fishes, insects, plants, fossiles, fountains, etc. London: Innys, 1718.

8vo. [8], 376, [10]pp + 2pp advts. Contemporary full diced leather, expertrebacking with original backstrip, original marbled end-papers. Very nice copy.

First edition. Includes correspondence between Ray and Martin Lister as well as letters to otherscientists (e.g., Edward Lhwyd) and Ray’s List of local words” of Leeds (pp.321-342), compiledexpressly for Ralph Thoresby [see under 1816]. Keynes, John Ray, 109. Norman Library 1798.Wood p.529.


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Second Issue of Mercati’s Masterpiece, With New Appendix

■ [1719] Mercati, Michele. Metallotheca. Opus Posthumum, Auctoritate, & MunificentiaClementis Undecimi Pontificis Maximi E tenebris in lucem eductum… Rome: Jo. MariaeSalvioni, 1719.

Folio. lxiv, 378, [13] + 1p errata + 1p colophon (with engraved vignette);Appendix [engraved title-page in red and black]: (15), 53, (1)pp. With engravedtitle-page in red and black, an engraved portrait of Pope Clement XI + engravedportrait of Mercati (after a painting by Tintoretto) + engraved allegorical platedescribing the collection + folding engraved view of the Museum + foldingplate of the sulphur mine + 10 full-page illustrated section titles + 129 textengravings + four engraved plates (in pagination) + engraved portrait + 19 textengravings in text. Colophon dated 1717 although the title-page is dated 1719.Collates complete. Small stamp of the Bibliotheca Magnani , Città de Bologna,1816 on the corner of the title-page. Later large rubber stamp of “MarioCermenati” on the front end-paper. Some scattered foxing. Contemporary fullvellum, small tear at base of spine, otherwise a fine copy in a solid binding.Interesting association copy.

First edition, second state, printed from the same plates as the 1717 issue but with acancelled title, an engraved portrait of Lancisis added as well as an Appendix which ismainly devoted to corrections and re-engravings of 19 plates from the main section.Hoover, Bibliotheca De Re Metallica, 581, specifically calling attention to the “beautifulcopper engravings” (Hoover did not own a copy of the first, 1717 issue). Cited byBeringer. Alix Cooper, “The Museum and the book: The Metallotheca and the history ofan encyclopedic natural history in early modern Italy” IN: Journal of the History ofCollections, 7 (1995), pp.1-23. Sinkankas 4390. Ward & Carozzi, 1541. AntonioMagnani (1743-1811) was a famous Bolognese book collector; the public library wasnamed after him. Mario Cermenati (1868-1924), a native of Lecco, occupied the chairof geology and paleontology at the Univ. of Rome. He wrote a number of monographs

on Italian geology, Italian literature, and on Ulisse Aldrovandi. Cermenati also built an exceptionalprivate library which was dispersed after his death. Always active in radical politics, his hometownerected a statue in the center of its public square in his honor. For another book from his library,see Woodward 1739.

■ [1719] Monti, Giuseppe. De monumento diluviano nuper in agro Bononiensi detecto:Dissertatio in qua permultae ipsius inundationis vindiciae, a statu terrae antidiluvianae &postdiluvianae desumptae. Bologna: Rosi, 1719.

4to. 50pp + large (14 x 17 in.) folding engraved plate. Title in redand black with engraved vignette. Very clean copy with strong typeimpression. Contemporary full vellum over boards, a few small holesin spine otherwise very good.

First printing of a paper on fossilized grass [that is, signs of grass in stone]found around Bologna—a sure sign of the Deluge. Monti (1682-1760) was aprofessor of botany and natural history at the Univ. of Bologna. In the foldingplate, he makes visual references to similar fossils in both Worm’s andAldrovandi’s collections. Cited by Beringer. BM Nat. History III, 1341.Hoover, Bibliotheca De Re Metallica, 594. Ward & Carozzi, 1603, not citingthe presence of the large plate.


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Outstanding Collection of Fossil Plates

■ [1719] Wolfart, Petrius. Historiae Naturalis Hassiae Inferioris… Kassel: Harmes, 1719.

Folio. 52pp + elaborately engraved allegorical frontispiece + 25 engraved plates(two folding) of fossils, engraved by Corvinus after Eberlinus. Recent three-quarter morocco over marbled boards. A fine copy.

First edition, all published. Wolfart (1675-1726), a German physician, held the chart of physicand anatomy at Hanau. The exceptional plates depict a variety of shell and fish fossils, and thequality of the fish engravings is reminiscent of the work in Volta’s Ittiolitologia Veronese del MuseoBozziano (1796). Cited by Beringer. Hoover, Bibliotheca De Re Metallica, 895 (citing a copy withmisbound plates). Purchased from Zeitlin & Ver Brugge, 1960.

Another Fine Collection of Fossils

■ [1720] Volkmann, Georg Anton. Silesia Subterranea, oder Schlesien… Leipzig:Weidmann, 1720.

4to. [6], 344, [14]pp + 54 plates (numbered I-XXXIV, I-X, I-X). Two titles(Latin & German) both in red and black. Contemporary full vellum overboards with decorative stamped spine label. Herbert McLean Evans copy withhis bookplate on front paste-down (and Jahn’s below it). A fine copy.

First edition. One of the fullest early works describing anddepicting fossils, including many plant and mollusk fossils.“Volkmann had an extensive collection of minerals which heused for this work, and which was sold to the King of Poland,for 1000 Thalers, for the Dresden Museum”—Murray, III,p.254. This copy does not have a frontispiece. Although theOCLC collation mentions a frontispiece, as does Hoover,neither Ward & Carozzi nor BM Nat. History nor Nissenmention a frontispiece. Copies with even fewer plates arerecorded. Some cataloguers perhaps consider the first title-pageto be a “frontispiece.” (“Frontespizio” does mean title-page inItalian, causing frequent confusion.) Hoover, Bibliotheca De ReMetallica, 842 citing a frontispiece and 59 [?] plates; BM Nat.History p.2236 (54 plates). Nissen ZBI, 4281 (54 plates). Ward & Carozzi 2252. Cited byBeringer. Purchased from Zeitlin & Ver Brugge, who catalogued this fine copy as complete.

■ [1722] Sprat, Thomas. The History of the Royal-Society of London, for the improving ofnatural knowledge. London: Printed for S. Chapman, 1722.

4to. [16], 438pp + two folding plates. With armorial frontispiece. Title in redand black. Contemporary full paneled calf with later period rebacking, leatherspine label. Very clean copy.

Third edition, corrected. Purchased from Quaritch, 1962.


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■ [1721] Ray, John. Three Physico-Theological Discourses, Concerning 1. The Primitive Chaos,and Creation of the World. II. The General Deluge, its Causes and Effects. III. The Dissolution of theWorld, and Future Conflagration… London: Innys, 1721.

8vo. xxxi, [1], 456pp + four plates; lacks frontispiece portrait. Contemporarysignature of “Philemon Marsh Trin: Coll: Camb:” on front flyleaf.Contemporary full calf, quite worn, spine ends chipped.

Fourth edition (identical with the third edition of 1713). Notable edition of this work by Raybecause it features the first appearance in English of Edward Lhwyd’s letter on the “Origin ofMarine Fossils” (pp.175-203), which had previously appeared, in Latin, in Lhwyd’s LithophylaciiBritannici Ichnographia [1699]. Jahn points out that Ray included Lhwyd’s letter “to great effect.”Faul & Faul note that by Ray’s inclusion of the English version of this letter, Lhwyd’s views on theorigin of fossils “became available to a wide audience” (p.56). Citing this edition, Geikie notes thatin this letter Lhwyd “brings forward a number of shrewd arguments against ascribing fossil shellsand plants to Noah’s Flood” (p.78). Keynes, John Ray, 86 (who doesn’t note the addition of theLhwyd text).

■ [1722] Breyn, Johann Philipp. Epistola de Melonibus Petrefactis Montis Carmel vulgocreditis… Leipzig: Titii, 1722.

4to. 48pp + two engraved plates. Old damp stain on edge of some leaves;scattered foxing, otherwise very good. Recent cloth and boards with a stain onthe rear board.

First edition. Breyn was a German naturalist (1680-1764) who had assembled his own “cabinet,”including minerals; a catalogue of this collection was published in 1765. Breyn also wrote animportant work on fossil sea-urchins in 1732. This paper is accompanied by two detailedcopperplate engravings of the petrified “melones.” Breyn’s text is followed by two other “letters”commenting upon his ideas: “The first letter was written by Georg R. Remus, the second byNathaniel Sendel”—Ward & Carozzi, 315 (citing only one plate).

■ [1723] Scheuchzer, Johann Jacob. Herbarium Diluvianum Collectum a Johanne JacoboScheuchzero, Med. D… Leyden: Vander Aa, 1723.

Folio. [6], 119, [5]pp + engraved frontispiece portraitof Scheuchzer + extra engraved title-page + 14 plates.Title in red and black with engraved vignette.Contemporary full mottled calf with decorative gilt-stamped spine, original marbled end-papers. Lowerfront joint slightly cracked; old damp stain on edge ofrear cover, otherwise a very good, bright copy.

Second [new] edition. Plates 1-10 are the same as in the first1709 edition (although Plate 5 is not printed in sepia), whilePlates 11-14, bound in the Appendix, are new to this edition.BM Nat. History p.1830. Ward & Carozzi, 1971.


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■ [1723] Bél, Martin. Hungariae Antiquae et Novae Prodromus, cum specimine, quomodo insingulis operis partibus elaborandis, versari constituerit… Nuremberg: Peter Conrad Monath, 1723.

Folio. [22], 204pp + one large folding map + two plates (including one largefolding plate of an extensive cave, with much annotated text). Engraved

vignette on title-page. Three engraved chapter head-piecesand five large engravings in text. Large armorial bookplateon front paste-down, two small 19th century private librarystamps on end-paper. Contemporary full calf withdecorative gilt-stamped spine, slightly scuffed otherwise afine copy, text and plates excellent.

First edition. Account of ancient and modern Hungary, the firstportion covering the history of the region, the second documentingthen-current highspots, such as Hungarian hot springs (pp.128-149)with three attractive text engravings (of two towns and one of aninterior of a hot spring), wine and vineyards, and medicine (with anice engraved plate of the Belladonna plant). Also with references tomountains, mineral resources, and caves (where some fossils had beendiscovered), with a fine large engraving. Cited by Beringer. Brunet I,741 (under Belius). Graesse I, p. 322.

■ [1723] Woodward, John. An Essay toward a Natural History of the Earth; and TerrestrialBodies, Especially Minerals; as also of the Sea, Rivers, and Springs. With an Account of the UniversalDeluge: and of the Effects that it had upon the Earth. London: Bettesworth & Taylor et al, 1723.

8vo. [12], 304pp + 1pp advt. Contemporary full panelled calf (with stampingin blind) with later expert leather rebacking and red leather spine label.Bookplate of Sir Thom. W. White on front paste-down, and small armorialWhite bookplate pasted just over Sir Thom’s. A very good copy.

Third edition. Jahn, “A bibliographical history of John Woodward’s An essay toward a naturalhistory of the Earth,” pp.194-96. BM Nat. History V, p.2359. Ward & Carozzi, 2361.

■ [1724] Ehrhart, Balthasar. Dissertatio Medica Inauguralis, De Belemnitis Suevicis. Leyden:Wishoff, 1724.

4to. 21, (1)pp + one folding plate. Old damp stain in text. Engraved vignetteon title-page. Modern polished calf and marbled boards.

First edition. In this important paper on fossils in Sweden, Ehrhartwas able to show that belemnites, long thought to be inorganicfossils, had a distinctive chambered shell “analogous to that of theliving cephalopod molluscs Nautilus and Spirula. Combined with hiscareful analysis of the mode of growth of the ‘guard,’ this structuralanalogy made the organic origin of belemnites almost indisputable”(Rudwick, pp.88-89). Ehrhart cites as his sources most of the authorsfound in the Jahn Collection—e.g., Scheuchzer, de Boodt, andVolkmann. Cited by Beringer; in turn, in the second edition of thispaper (1727), Ehrhart praised the “illustrious Doctor Beringer” forhis “sincere and candid exposition” of the hoax perpetrated upon hisesteemed person.


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Landmark Illustrated History by the Father of Oceanography

■ [1725] Marsigli, Luigi. Histoire Physique de la Mer: Ouvrage enrichi de figures dessinées d’aprèsle naturel. Amsterdam: Aux depens de la Compagnie, 1725.

Folio. [8], xi, 173pp + engraved allegoricalfrontispiece + 12 engraved maps, charts and tables(including two double-page maps) + 40 engravedplates, including 10 plates handsomely colored. Titlein red and black with engraved vignette. Small blue-ink Russian library stamp on corner of the title-page,bookplate on front paste-down, but with an armorialbookplate pasted over it. Contemporary full calf,covers slightly bowed, joints starting at ends but still atight copy. Text and plates fine.

First edition, rarely found with any hand-colored plates.The first modern treatise on oceanography in its first fulledition, by the acknowledged “father of oceanography” andfounder of the Instituto delle scienze e dell’arte in Bologna. In this beautifully printed and illustratedbook, Marsigli (1658-1730) “treated problems which until then had been veiled by error andlegend. Marsigli examined every aspect of the subject: the morphology of the basin andrelationships between the lands and above water; the water’s properties (colour, temperature,salinity) and its motion (waves, currents, tides); the biology of the sea, which foretold the adventof maritime biology. Among the plants he numbered animals like corals, which before his time hadbeen regarded as inorganic matter. Finally Marsigli was the precursor of the systematicoceanographic exploration that was to begin half a century later with the famous voyage of theEndeavour” (Dictionary of Scientific Biography IX, p.135). Marsigli enjoyed an activecorrespondence with many European scientists, including Scheuchzer (see John Stoye, Marsigli’sEurope: 1680-1730: the life and times of Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli, soldier and virtuoso, 1994,pp.267-70). The wonderful frontispiece depicts a quite puzzled Neptune surrounded by a dry seabottom, which includes many shells. The text, as well as the plates, treat the issue of fossil shells.BM Nat. History III, p. 1247. Brunet III, 1474 noting that although uncolored, a copy had beenseen “avec fig. color.” Nissen ZBI, 2699, without noting color plates. Norman Library 1445, acopy without color plates [the frontispiece is reproduced on Vol. II, p.528 of the Norman Librarycatalogue]. Ward & Carozzi, 1504 (reproducing the title-page on p.321).

Dr. Kundmann’s Cabinet of Curiosities

■ [1726] Kundmann, Johann Christian. Promptuarium rerum naturalium et artificialiumVratislaviense praecipue. Breslau: Hubertum, 1726.

4to. [6], 364, [12]pp. Title in red and black. Contemporary vellum andmarbled boards, some shelf wear on edges, otherwise a very good copy.

First edition. Kundmann’s first catalogue of his natural history collection. A German physician inBreslau (1648-1751), the collector’s Naturalienkabinet consisted primarily of mineral, shell, andfossil specimens. This volume “contains (1) an account of various museums in and of thecuriosities of Breslau (pp.1-88); (2) a catalogue of the author’s collection (pp.89-336); and (3) alist of the works quoted to or referred to (pp.337-364). The descriptions of the objects in theMuseum are accompanied by references to the literature of the particular subjects”—Murray, II,313. Wilson, The History of Mineral Collecting, p.215 (erroneously citing 380pp + plates).


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“One of the most celebrated hoaxes in the history of science”Norman Library Catalogue

■ [1726] Beringer, Johann Bartholomew Adam. Lithographiae Wirceburgenis, decentisLapidum figuratorum, a protiori insectformium, prodigiosis imaginibus exornatae specimen primum.Würtzburg: Engmann, 1726.

Folio. Engraved frontispiece + [12], 96pp + 21 engraved plates + 6pp. Someminor worming in upper corner to p.70 (ending in a pinhole), otherwise a finecopy, recased in full vellum, binding fine. Melvin Jahn’s personal copy.

First edition, first state, with Hueber’s “Corollaries.” “The whole story [of the hoax perpetratedupon Beringer by two jealous academic colleagues] illustrated the uncertain state ofpaleontological knowledge in the early eighteenth century when few guidelines existed todetermine genuine fossils from mere figured stones” (Grinke, 52). As Rudwick points out,Beringer’s initial “discovery of these strange specimens led him to review systematically all previoustheories about fossils; and since they seemed (correctly) to be only ‘imitations’ of organisms heconcluded that they added weight to all the earlier arguments for the inorganic origin of fossils.But by 1726, when Beringer published his work, such a conclusion was already old-fashioned; andhis personal humiliation when the hoax was recognized may well have hastened [the] finaldisappearance” of the lusus naturae theory of fossils (The Meaning of Fossils, p.90). Adams saidmuch the same when he noted that Beringer’s experience dealt “a deadly blow to the varioustheories which accounted for fossils as the result of forces at work within the earth” (The Birth andDevelopment of the Geological Sciences, p.259). Until the publication ofMelvin Jahn’s book, The Lying Stones of Dr. Beringer, the commonly heldbelief was that the “lying stones” were manufactured and planted by afew of the doctor’s mischievous students. But, as Jahn reveals, the hoaxwas the work a pair of academic rivals—and once he became wise totheir game, Beringer lost little time in taking them to court. His book,however, was at the printers before he fully accepted that he had beenduped. Beringer immediately sought to suppress the publication andgather as many copies as possible. Writing 78 years after the event, JamesParkinson thought that Beringer’s experience offered two lessons toscientists: “it plainly demonstrates that learning may not be sufficient toprevent an unsuspecting man from becoming the dupe of excessivecredulity… [And] the quantity of censure and ridicule, to which theauthor was exposed, served, not only to render his cotemporaries lessliable to imposition; but also more cautious in indulging in unsupportedhypothesis” (Organic Remains of a Former World, I, p.26).

Balsinger (p.736) notes Dr. Beringer’s collecting interests, but adds thathe was “extremely credulous.” Faul & Faul p.61 (referring the reader toJahn “for a full story”). Geikie pp.102-03. Grinke, From Wunderkammerto Museum, 52, cataloguing the 1767 ed. Zittel p.19 (“a semi-tragic,semi-comic event”). Norman Library 195 (second state). Nissen ZBI,330. Ward & Carozzi, 182 (concluding their bibliography byreproducing Beringer’s elaborate frontispiece on p.536). The Freilichcopy, in worn later wrappers, sold for $12,000.


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The Man Who Witnessed The Flood

■ [1726] Scheuchzer, Johann Jacob. Homo Diluvii Testis… Zurich: Byrgklini, 1726.

8vo. 24pp + large (20 5/8 x 9 1/4 in.) folding woodblock print of the “Witnessof the Deluge” plate engraved by David Reding from a drawing by DavidScheuchzer, Zurich, 1726. Disbound pamphlet. Some browning of textotherwise fine. Laid in: a reduced photostat of Scheuchzer’s exceedingly rare

1732 broadside.

First printing of this rare pamphlet in whichScheuchzer describes the fossil skeleton hediscovered in 1725, believing that he hadfinally found a human record of the GreatFlood. But it was not meant to be. Althoughthis fossil was not a hoax of the same natureas the fraud perpetrated at the same timeupon Beringer, Scheuchzer’s Homo certainlywas not what it appeared to be, or least notwhat it appeared to be to Scheuchzer. TheSwiss scientist sent an enthusiastic

preliminary report to Sir Hans Sloane, secretary of the Royal Society of London—this wasquickly published in the Philosophical Transactions (Jan.-Feb., 1726), and then in a few otherscientific journals. He then followed up with this monograph. “Obsessed by his diluvial theory,[Scheuchzer] finally explained in Homo diluvii testis that the remains of what we now know to bea large fossil salamander [as revealed by Cuvier] were the skeleton of one of the infamous men whohad brought about the calamity of the Flood” (Ward & Carozzi, p.13-14). Scheuchzer producedanother image of the large, now infamous, print for Volume I of his Physica Sacra (1731). Murraynotes that publication of this report brought “fossil man into great prominence” inthe eighteenth century (I, p.194). Although credit for properly identifyingScheuchzer’s “Man” normally goes to Cuvier [in his Recherches sur les Ossemens Fossiles,3rd ed., 1825], Peter Camper had inspected the fossil in question in 1787 and calledattention to its misidentification. Ironically, the giant extinct salamander wascrowned Andrias Scheuchzeri. Historians of science have sought to make Scheuchzer’senthusiastic error, like Beringer’s, an object lesson in itself. “What had gone wrong?,”Joseph Levine asked. “Obviously, Scheuchzer in his eagerness to demonstrate histheory had leaped from a superficial resemblance to a dogmatic conclusion. ‘Nothingless than total blindness, on a scientific level,’ Cuvier wrote, ‘can explain how a manof Scheuchzer’s rank, a man who was a physician and must have seen humanskeletons, could embrace such a gross self-deception.’ It seemed impossible that evena cursory examination would not have shown the difference. But Cuvier hadforgotten the labor of a hundred years, not least his own, in accumulating fossil remains andestablishing the whole new science of comparative anatomy” (Dr. Woodward’s Shield, p.277).

There are no holdings of this pamphlet on OCLC nor is it listed in BM Nat. History, Graesse, orBrunet—although it is listed in Ward & Carozzi (1973) who reproduced the title-page on p.397and the folding plate (reduced) on p.535. Faul & Faul (p.58) call a reader’s attention to MelvinJahn’s “excellent account of Scheuchzer’s pseudohuman fossils” printed in Schneer. Scheuchzer’snamesake is treated in detailed in Frank Westphal’s Die Tertiären und Rezenten EurasiastischenRiesensalamander (Genus Andrias, Urodela, Amphibia) (Stuttgart, 1958). Westphal’s scientificmonograph includes a discussion of Scheuchzer’s “discovery” with a reprint of the originalwoodcut and photographs of the original (still extant) fossil.


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■ [1726] Woodward, John. The Natural History of the Earth, Illustrated, Inlarged, andDefended. London: Tho. Edlin, 1726.

8vo. [11], 169, [16]; 163pp + errata + 2pp advts. Signatures of WilliamDavidson and R. Davidson on top of the title-page as well as a small armorialstamp. Contemporary full panelled calf (stamped in blind) with later expertleather rebacking and red leather spine label.

First edition in English, translated from the Woodward’s Latin edition by Benjamin Hollowayand includes The Natural History of the Earth, Illustrated, and Inlarged: as also Defended, and theObjections against, Particularly those lately publish’d by Dr. Camerarius, answered (with a separatetitle-page and pagination, although the catchword on the last leaf of the first work shows that thetwo titles were meant to be bound together and considered as one). BM Nat. History V, p.2359.

■ [1727] Derham, W. Physico-Theology: or, A demonstration of the being and attributes of God,from his works of creation: Being the substance of sixteen sermons preached in St. Mary-le-Bow Church,London; at the Honourable Mr. Boyle’s lectures, in the years 1711, and 1712… Seventh edition.London: Innys, 1727.

8vo. [16], xvi, 444, [10] + [2]pp advt + one folding plate. Contemporary fullpolished calf with expert period leather rebacking with leather spine label. Veryclean copy.

Seventh edition. First published in 1713. Derham had edited a number of John Ray’s books, andwas one of the better known “natural theologians” of his day. In these “sermons”—actually thetext, with extensive foot-notes added, of Derham’s Boyle Lectures—Derham covers many diversetopics, including atmosphere, gravity, weather, geography, human and animal physiology, thesenses, food, posture, insects, and plant life.

Pioneer Work in Museography

■ [1727] [Einckel, Casper Friedrich.] Museographia, oder, Anleitung zum rechten Begriff undnützlicher Anlegung der Museorum, oder Raritäten-Kammern… Von C.F. Neickelio [pseud.]Leipzig: Michael Hubert, 1727.

4to. [22], 464, [8]pp + wonderful engraved frontispiece view of the idealprivate museum (reproduced on our back cover). Title in red and black. Recentcloth and boards. Fine copy.

First edition of this unusual guidebook and handbook to museums and private collections.Wilson devoted many pages to Einckel’s treatise—although he didn’t realize that “Neickelio” wasa pseudonym. In this work, Wilson pointed out, the author “presents a geographically arrangedcompendium of all the known [natural history] collections… He also lists all of the importantlibraries of the time, and discusses numerous practical and philosophical questions of interest tothe collector. Einckel also “thoughtfully includes a list of 25 guidelines for proper etiquette andmaximum benefit when visiting someone’s collection”—The History of Mineral Collecting,pp.43-46. Wilson translated all 25 guidelines reprinted ther as “Rules for Museum Visiting.” BMNat. History III, p.1409, under “Neickelius,” but recognizing this as Einckel’s pseudonym.This book served as the major reference on contemporary European collections for both Murray(1904) and Balsinger (1970). Both cite it and quote from it frequently. Murray (II, p.42) called it“a rare book.”


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Scheuchzer’s “Copper Bible” With Astounding Illustrations

■ [1728] Scheuchzer, Johann Jacob. Geestelyke Natuurkunde, Uitgegeven in de latynsche taaldoor denhooggeleerden heere Jan. Jacb. Scheuchzer… Amsterdam: Schenk, 1728-1739.

Folios, 15 volumes bound in six. 1810pp + three engravedportraits + two engraved frontispieces + 758 engraved plates. Allvolumes with titles in red and black. Volumes 1-8 haveadditional titles (in black only) with varied dates. Contemporaryfull vellum, uniform bindings with blind-stamped designs. Fourvolumes with cracked joints (either front or rear), but all coverssolid. Some soiling on covers; text and plates are in fine, brightcondition.

First Dutch edition of Scheuchzer’s unusual “concordance” to the Oldand New Testaments, an elaborately illustrated work on nature asmentioned in the Bible, best known by the title of the Latin edition,Physica Sacra. The work is rightfully famous for the outstandingcopperplates engraved by a number of well-known Augsburg artists(including Corvinus, Sperling, and Linz) after original drawings byJohann Melchior Füssli and produced by Johann A. Pfeffel. The plates,which frequently border on the fantastic, are identical in all editions. Theyhave been called one of the high points of German graphic arts of theeighteenth century. The range of topics covered is impressive, fromlocusts, stars, human anatomy, fish and birds, to natural (floods) andunnatural (fire balls) events, lions, and snowflakes. The work is also well-known for its 24 plates of snakes which were drawn from specimens in theLinck Naturalienkabinett in Leipzig. In Volume I Scheuchzer included are-drawn engraving of his Homo diluvii testis as well as some fine

engravings of fossils. There are also some wonderfully detailed illustrations of the Ark. This Dutchedition is contemporaneous with the German (Kupfer-Babel, in welcher die Physica Sacra,Augsburg, 1731-35), Latin (Augsburg, 1731-35), and French (Amsterdam, 1732-37) languageeditions. The red-and-black title pages of Volumes 1-13have an imprint date of 1735, Volume 14 has 1738, andVolume 15, 1739. However, Volumes 1-8 each have anadditional title-page, set in black only, dated 1728 (v. 1),1729 (V. 2-6) and 1730 (V. 7-8). It is not clear why thisDutch edition has these contradictory title-pages. BrunetV, 198, noting that some of the plates “depict subjects thathad not yet been portrayed, and that this is enough tomake this great work indispensable to naturalists.” GraesseV, p.300. Nissen ZBI, 3661. Also see Hans Fischer, JohannJakob Scheuchzer: Naturforscher und Arzt (Zurich, 1972),which discusses Physica Sacra at length and reproducesseven plates from this work. The snake plates are thesubject of an article in the most recent issue of The Bulletinof the International Society for the History and Bibliographyof Herpetology (Vol. 4, No. 2, 2003).


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■ [1729] Woodward, John. An Attempt Towards a Natural History of the Fossils of England;In a Catalogue of the English Fossils in the Collection of J. Woodward, M.D. London: Fayram,1729 [-1728].

8vo. xvi, 243; viii, 115; iv, 110; iv, 52; iv, 33; v, 21; [2], 15pp. Two volumesbound as one (with consecutive signatures ). Some neatly penned ownershipmarks from 1733 and later on the end-papers. Contemporary full calf, rubbed,front joint just starting, leather label. Very good copy.

First printing of the “celebrated catalogue” of Woodward’s famous fossil collection, publishedposthumously. “In [the collection’s] complexity, we may discover details on thousands ofspecimens of fossils, minerals, and rocks, whose overall size cannot be appreciated from the

pagination alone inasmuch as a very small type was used in its printing, thuscompressing an enormous amount of information into a physically small book.Further to be discovered is the fact that Woodward collected everythingderived in some way from Earth’s crust, not only being above inserting into hiscabinet such mundane things as sand, gravel, and pebbles, not to mention alarge variety of rocks and animal & vegetable fossils”—Sinkankas 7325.Wilson notes that Woodward [1665-1728] not only performed his ownextensive field collecting (even while teaching at Cambridge) but acquiredspecimens from other collectors around the world. “Woodward,” Wilson adds,“collected minerals in a more systematic and specialized way than any of hiscompatriots had up to that time.” Geikie called Woodward’s “Catalogue” his“most important contribution to science” (p.68). Woodward’s original woodencabinets have survived intact at Cambridge’s Sedgwick Museum. Volume I ofthis work (title-page dated 1729) is in two parts—Of the Fossils that are realand natural (243pp) and Exhibiting the Fossils that are extraneous (115pp).Volume II (with title-page dated 1728) is in four parts: A Catalogue of theadditional English native Fossils (110pp), A Catalogue of the Foreign Fossils (53,iv, 33pp), An addition to the Catalogue of the Foreign native Fossils (21pp), andAn addition to the Catalogue of the foreign extraneous Fossils (15pp). BM Nat.History V, p.2359. Murray, I, pp.118-119. Ward & Carozzi 2364. Wilson,

The History of Mineral Collecting, pp.67-68, p.228. Also see David Price, “John Woodward and aSurviving British Geological Collection from the Early Eighteenth Century” (Journal of the Historyof Collections, 1:1, 1989, pp.79-95), who notes that Woodward received specimens from AgostinoScilla, Martin Lister, and John Morton (among others).

■ [1730] Behrens, Georg Henning. The natural history of Hartz-Forest, in His Majesty KingGeorge’s German dominions. Being a succinct account of the caverns, lakes, springs, rivers,mountains, rocks, quarries, fossiles, castles, gardens… mines, several engines belonging to them; ores, themanner of refining them… London: T. Osborne, 1730.

8vo. [16], 164, [8]pp + [4]pp advts. A few old stamps from a Dublin library onthe title-page. Contemporary polished calf, some wear on ends, with recentrebacking and new end-papers.

First edition in English (trans. John Andree) of Behrens’s Hercynia curiosa hartz-wald(Nordhausen, 1703), which was cited by Beringer. Jahn refers to Behrens’ detailed description” ofthis region, including many curious products of nature [e.g., fossils] (The Lying Stones, p.167). BMNat. History VI, p.72.


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■ [1730] Gimma, D. Giacinto. Della Storia Naturale delle Gemme, della Pietre, e di tutti inMinerali ovvero della Fissica Sotteranea. Two volumes. Naples: A Spese dello Steso Muzio, e diFelice Mosca, 1730.

Two volumes, 4tos. [48], 551 + engraved allegorical frontispiece; [2], 603pp.Old damp stain in text of both volumes. Contemporary full vellum, somewrinkling due to damp stain.

First edition of a very scarce set. “One of the best guide books for the student who wishes to explorethe mazes of ancient literature of the geological sciences”—Adams, The Birth and Development ofthe Geological Sciences, p.5 (Adams also praised Gimma’s “excellent review of the whole question” offigured stones). “This magnificent work is valuable for its comparison of statements made by manyauthorities and the injection of the author’s own views, not to mention the sheer quality ofinformation supplied by the text. It deserves translation, Rare” (Sinkankas 2396). Hoover,Bibliotheca De Re Metallica, 353. Ward & Carozzi, 914 (reproducing the title-page on p.233).]

■ [1730] Liebknecht, Johann Georg. Hassiae subterraneae specimen, clarissima testimoniadiluvii universalis heic et in locis vicinioribus occurrentia ex triplici regno, animali, vegetabili &minerali petita. Giessen & Frankfurt: Lammers, 1730.

4to. [22], 490, [21] + 15 plates (mostly fossils) + one small folding map. Alsowith a large engraved vignette of the arms of Great Britain on the dedicationleaf. Contemporary leather and paste-paper covered boards with leather spinelabel. A fine copy.

First edition. Detailed account of items found in the earth in the vicinity of Giessen, includingmany fossils as well as coins, stoneware, and the artifacts. Liebknecht explains the presence of allof the fossils within the context of the Great Flood. A mathematician by training, Liebknecht(1679-1749) was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1728, which may explain the dedicationof the book to the Prince of Wales, and the presence of the British arms. Hoover, Bibliotheca DeRe Metallica, 538—citing the second edition of 1759. Nissen ZBI, 2508. Ward & Carozzi, 1386(citing only 14 plates).

■ [1732] Leupold, Jacob. Prodromus bibliothecae Metallicae. Wolfenbüttel, 1732.

8vo. 157, [18pp]. Armorial binding in contemporary full calf, with the arms ofthe Earl of Bute stamped in gilt on both covers, decorative gilt-stamped spine.Front joint cracked otherwise a very good copy.

First edition of this rare posthumously published bibliography “of most of the writings on themineral kingdom: such as metals, minerals, salts, stones, petrifications, various earths, and finallyall fossils; including historical, physical, chemical, medical, mechanical, legal, and theologicalwritings, and what therein has been found most useful” [translation of sub-title]. Leupold’smanuscript was corrected and “improved upon” by the well-known Franz Ernst Bruckmann(1697-1752), a physician and minerologist and author of such works as Historia naturalis curiosalapidis (1727). Sinkankas cites Leupold’s work as one of his references in Gemology: An AnnotatedBibliography. Oddly, this book is not represented in the Hoover Collection, although Hoover didown 13 other titles by Bruckmann (Cf. Bibliotheca De Re Metallica, 174-186). Not in Brunet orGraesse, although Leupold’s important series on mechanical engineering, Theatrum machinarunUniversale (1724-27), naturally is noted. BM Nat. History III, p.1099. Dawsons (of Pall Mall)originally bought this copy at Sotheby’s sale of the Earl of Bute’s scientific books on July 3-4, 1961.


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■ [1733] Linck, Johann Heinrich. De Stellis Marinis liber singularis. Leipzig: Schuster, 1733.

Folio. [24], 107; [4] + 42 engraved plates. Title in red and blackwith engraved vignette. Plate section with separate engraved title-page (in red and black and engraved vignette) dated 1733. Threeengraved chapter head-pieces, three engraved tail-pieces, and twolarge engravings in text. Georges Cuvier’s copy, with his stamp andthe stamp of the Museé d’Histoire Naturelle on the title-page.Some browning and scattered foxing, otherwise a very good copyin contemporary morocco and marbled paste-paper boards. Aninteresting association copy, once owned by the famous Frenchgeologist and paleontologist.

First edition. Classic work on starfish, with an Appendixincluding (among other items) the first publication ofEdward Lhwyd’s De Stellis Marinis Oceani Brittannici(pp.77-88), originally delivered as a lecture in Oxford in1703. Linck (1674-1735) was a German pharmacist whoinherited and enlarged upon his family’s famous naturalhistory collection (first established by his father). His son,in turn, of the same name (1734-1807) expanded thecollection even more. The Linck Museum was a sourcefor many of the zoological specimens depicted inScheuchzer’s Physica Sacra [see 1728]. BM Nat. Historyp.1115. Brunet III, 1081. Nissen ZBI, 2514. Purchasedfrom Zeitlin & Ver Brugge.

■ [1734] Henckel, Johan F. Idea Generalis de Lapidum Origine per ObservationesExperiment & Consectaria Succinte Adumbrata. Dresden & Leipzig: In Officina LibrariaHekeliana, 1734.

12mo. 108 [i.e 92pp— pp.17-32 omitted, but collates complete]. Repair madeto bottom edge of last leaf. Small ownership stamp of Johannes Walther[with crossed geological hammers] on bottom of title-page. Recent red moroccoand cloth.

Only printing of this small tract by the German mineralogist and geologist known for his“extensive personal mineral & fossil collection” (Sinkankas 2882). “Henckel [1697-1744) was aphysician and pioneer in mineral chemistry in the great mining center of Freiburg and describedin his many books [including this one] the best early accounts of arsenic, zinc, and a variety ofpyrites” (Hoover, Bibliotheca De Re Metallica, 402). J.R. Parrington called Henckel the “father ofmineral chemistry” (A History of Chemistry). Dictionary of Scientific Biography VI, p.259.


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■ [1735] Lesser, Friedrich Christian. Lithotheologie, das ist: natürlich Historie und geistlicheBetrachtung der Steine… Hamburg: Brandt, 1735.

Thick 8vo. xlvii, 1300, [56]pp + 10 folding plates of fossils; one folding table.Contemporary leather over marbled boards, spine and covers rubbed, otherwisea very good copy.

First edition. Lesser (1692-1754) was a Lutheran theologian and a naturalist who had assembledhis own cabinet of stones, plants, and insects (as well as a library of rare books). “Utterlyfascinating work in great detail & complexity, attempting to demonstrate the hand of God in everymanifestation of the mineral kingdom. Lesser assembled an astounding fund of information culledfrom hundreds of ancient and modern sources and covering nearly every aspect of geology,mineralogy, paleontology, and gemology”—Sinkankas 3904. Hoover, Bibliotheca De Re Metallica,530 (listing the 1751 ed.) Ward & Carozzi, 1381 (1751 ed.).

■ [1735] Woodward, John. Geographie Physique; ou, Essaysur l’histoire naturelle de la terre. Paris: Braisson, 1735.

4to. xiv, 389pp + one folding plate. Old damp stainthroughout. Contemporary full calf, also with oldstain on covers, front joint starting, decorative gilt-stamped spine, chipped at ends.

First French Edition (Paris). Jahn, “A bibliographical historyof John Woodward’s An essay toward a natural history of theEarth,” pp.197-99, noting that “The French, Italian andGerman translations of the Essay include sections taken fromtwo of Woodward’s other works: Natural History of the Earth,illustrated (1726) and Fossils of all Kinds (1728).”

■ [1736] Geoffroy, Etienne-Francois. A treatise on the fossil, vegetable, and animalsubstances, that are made use of in physick. London: Innys and Manby, 1736.

8vo. xxiv, 387, [13]pp. Contemporary full paneled calf with recent rebackingand leather spine label. Very good copy.

First edition in any language of Geoffrey’s materia medica, the first systematic work onpharmacognosy, translated by George Douglas from a manuscript copy of Geoffroy’s lecturesdelivered in Paris. This work includes the history and potential medical properties of all sorts ofobjects, including fossils—such as fossilised shark’s teeth and unicorn horns—and bituminousjuices, metallick fossils, and gems. Amber, we learn, was good for headaches. W. A. Smeaton pointsout that this English edition “contains a short account of the animal kingdom which is not in theLatin [1741] and French [1743] editions” (Dictionary of Scientific Biography, IV, pp.352-54).Geoffrey (1672-1731) taught medicine and pharmacy in Paris as was a member of Royal Societyof London as well as the Académie des Sciences of Paris. Not cited by Sinkankas.


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■ [1738] Ritter, Albrecht. Epistolica Historico-Physica Oryctographica Goslariensis… EditioAltera priore multo auctior et correctior. Sondershausen, 1738. 32pp + two folding plates.

BOUND WITH:

Ritter, Albrecht. Specimen II. Oryctographie Calenbergicae sive Rerum Fossilium quae… inDucatu Electorali Brunsvico-Luneburgico Calenberg eruuntur historico-physicae delineationis…Sondershausen, 1743.

8vo. 32pp + one folding plate. Contemporary leather and paste-paper boards;a very good copy.

Second edition of the first work; first edition of the second. Ritter wrote a number of brief paperson fossils—the three plates in these two works illustrated various fossils and “formed stones.”Ritter’s Specimen I was published in 1741. Hoover, Bibliotheca De Re Metallica, 687 (Specimen Iand II). Nissen ZBI, 3433 (Epistolica) and 3435 (Specimen II). Ward & Carozzi, 1881.

■ [1739] Barba, Alvaro Alonso et al. A Collection of Scarce and Valuable Treatises UponMetals, Mines and Minerals… being a translation from the learned Albaro Alonso Barba, Directorof the mines at Potosi, in the Spanish West-Indies… London: Printed for James Hodges, 1739 [-1738].

12mo. [16], 170, [6], 173-215; [5], 66, [2]pp + one plate. Second state of title-page. Contemporary full calf, with expert recent leather rebacking, hingesstrengthened, otherwise very good.

First edition thus. Barba’s “pioneering work on mines and mining which the Spaniards, in controlof their boom town of Potosi [Peru] in the inaccessible Andes, tried to keep secret for as long aspossible” (Hoover 83) was first published in English in 1670. Here the work is published with afew other related titles, including Gabriel Plattes’ A discovery of subterranean treasure, 1738[pp.171-215) and Thomas Houghton’s Rare Avis in Terris; Or the Compleat Miner, 1738 (2dedition, corrected, 60pp). Hoover, Bibliotheca De Re Metallica, 225. Ward & Carozzi, 115.

■ [1739] Woodward, John. Geografia Fisica: ovvero Saggio intorno allastoria naturale della terra. Venice: Pasquali, 1739.

8vo. xi, 533p + 3pp advts + one folding plate (with old repair onverso). Title in red and black with small woodcut vignette. Someminor worming present in front and rear hinges, but is not presentin the text. Large rubber stamp of “Mario Cermenati” on free frontend-paper. Contemporary full vellum over boards, a fine copy.

First Italian edition. Jahn, “A bibliographical history of John Woodward’s Anessay toward a natural history of the Earth,” pp.201-203, noting that “TheFrench, Italian and German translations of the Essay include sections takenfrom two of Woodward’s other works: Natural History of the Earth, illustrated(1726) and Fossils of all Kinds (1728).” As noted in Mercati 1719, Cermenatitaught geology and paleontology in Rome.


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■ [1739] Rumpf, Georg Eberhard. Thesaurus Imaginum Piscium Testaceorum; quales suntcancri, echini, echinometra, stellae marinae, &c. ut et cochlearum… The Hague: de Hondt, 1739.

Folio. 14, [8]pp + engravedfrontispiece portrait + engravedtitle-page [dated 1711] + 60engraved plates. Title in red andblack with engraved vignette.Contemporary half-leather overplain boards, scuffed andchipped; slight old damp stain onlower corner of rear leaves;otherwise a very good,untrimmed copy.

Second edition. Although this“abridgment” of Rumpf ’s famous cataloguewas first published in Leyden in 1711 byPeter Vander Aa, this 1739 edition doesinclude Vander Aa’s wonderfully allegoricaltitle-page in which a group of classicallyattired Ancients enthusiastically work ontheir shell collection. This volume

reproduces all 60 plates from Rumpf ’s D’Amboinsche Rariteitkamer (1705), with the addition of aLatin preface, contents of plates, and indices. Murray, III, p.146. Nissen ZBI, 3520. Wood p.546,citing this 1739 issuing and adding, “The first edition of this extract was (probably) issued in1711.” Wilson, The History of Mineral Collecting, p.222, citing 1711 ed.

■ [1740] Séguier, Johanne-Francisco. Bibliotheca Botanica, sive Catalogus Auctorum etLibrorum omnium qui de Re Botanica, de Medicamentis ex Vegetabilibus paratis, de Re Rustica, [and]de Horticultura tractant… Accessit Bibliotheca Botanica Jo. Ant. Bumaldi… The Hague: JoannemNeaulme, 1740.

4to. 16, 450, 66pp. Title in red and black. Later red cloth over marbled boards.Very clean copy.

First edition of this early annotated botanical bibliography, covering floras, medical botany, andhorticultural works and printed in a number of languages. “The coverage of the book is excellent,due to the fact that Séguier saw an unusual number of libraries on his European tour. Hefurthermore consulted as many catalogues of private libraries as possible. With the major Paris andLondon libraries accounted for, with the information obtained from Gronovius in Holland, andhis careful scanning of the literature, Séguier achieved a very high degree of coverage” (Stafleu &Cowan, Taxonomic Literature, 11624). Of course, many of the works in the Jahn collection arereferenced in this work. Includes the separately paginated reprint of Montalbanus’s BibliothecaBotanica, seu Herbaristarum Scriptorum Promota Synodia. BM Nat. History 1894.


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■ [1742] [Bourguet, Louis and Pierre Carter] Traité des Petrifications. Paris: Braisson, 1742.

4to. xvi, 163, 91, [1]pp + 60 folding plates. Manuscript note in French on thetitle-page states that this copy once belonged to Louis Delaunay, director of theMuseum of Natural History at Tours. Contemporary full mottled calf, rubbedwith some wear on corners, front joint starting at top and bottom but coversfirm; decorative gilt-stamped spine, original marbled end-papers. Text andplates fine.

First edition. One of the earliest books on paleontology published in French, and the main workof Bourguet [1678-1742], one of the outstanding geologists of the eighteenth century. Theillustrations of hundreds of fossils were collected by Bourguet (mostly from Switzerland) orreproduced from fossils depicted in the works of Lange and Scheuchzer. This work was also issuedin 1742 with a different title and imprint: Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire naturelle des petrificationsdans les quatre parties du monde (The Hague: Jean Neaulme, 1742). With the exception of the titleleaf, everything is identical with the Paris issue, and printed from the same type and plates. BMNat. History I, p.78 (under “B***”). Hoover, Bibliotheca De Re Metallica, 160 (Paris ed.). NissenZBI, 498, only citing the Hague edition for 1742. Ward & Carozzi, 282 (Paris ed.).

The Classic Shell Book

■ [1742] Gualtieri, Niccolo. Index Testarum Conchyliorum quae adseruantur in museoNicolai Gualteri… Florence: Albizzini, 1742.

Royal folio. xxiii + engraved portrait + engraved title-page + 110 plates, eachwith a page of descriptive letterpress on the versos facing the numbered leaves.Also with sixteen sectional title pages (in red and black with engraved vignette),each with a facing full-page engraving. Main title in red and black and with

large engraved vignette. Armorial bookplateof Arthur Wood on front paste-down. Lightold damp stain on lower corner of first 27leaves—very light and diminishes, but thestain is not near any of the fine shell plates.Contemporary full leather with marbledpanels mounted on covers, later periodrebacking with decorative title label. Solidand clean binding with plates and text in finecondition.

First edition. One of the classic illustrated plate bookson conchology, written by Gualtieri (1688-1744), amedical doctor as well as a professor at the Universityof Padua. Gualtieri’s close attention to an accurateclassification of the shells had a great influence on

Lamarck and other zoologists. The plates—engraved by Antonio Pazzi after drawings by GiuseppeMenabuoni—are now so well known that they have been reproduced as posters and wall-paper.There is also an active market in the sale of the individual original plates which have been recentlyhand-colored. For example, a New York gallery offers a set of eight prints removed from a volumeof this folio (newly colored and framed) for $4,800 [“wonderful decoration for the beach house”!].Murray noted, “The figures, says Cuvier, are numerous and exact” (I, p.147). BM Nat. History II,p.744. Nissen ZBI, 1736. Ward & Carozzi, 968. Shell Books (1684-1912) and Shells, #4. Dance,The Art of Natural History (1990), p.74. Murray, II, p.270


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■ [1742] Royal Society of Paris. The Philosophical History and Memoirs of the RoyalAcademy of Sciences at Paris: Or, An abridgment of all the papers relating to natural philosophy,which have been publish’d by the members of that illustrious society from the year 1699 to 1720.Translated and abridged by Thomas Martyn and Ephraim Chambers. London: Knapton, 1742.

Five volumes, 8vos. 456, [16]; 407, [15], 10; 422, [16]; 410, [14], 11-26; 426,14pp. With 44 (of 45) engraved plates, plate 3 in Vol. II not bound in [nor isthere any evidence of its removal]. Armorial bookplate of Downfield on eachfront paste-down. Bound in matching contemporary full polished calf withmatching red leather spine labels. Bindings, plates, and text in fine condition.

First edition in English. A collection of extracts and abridgements of papers on a variety of topics,including geology, natural history, meteorology, medicine, and astronomy. Each volume with itsown General Index as well as an Index to Authors’ Names [actually an index to authors named).Many references and citations to scientists throughout Europe, including Newton, Galileo, Kepler,and the English naturalists such as Lhwyd and Ray. For example, in a paper from 1718 on “Anexamination of the causes of the impression of plants marked on certain stones,” the author (M.de Jussieu) comments, “As I had remembered to have read in Mr Lhwyd’s letters, that the stonesimprinted with figures of plants, are most commonly found in the neighborhood of coal mines,rendered me attentive to the figure, the colour, and the impressions of all the stones which I foundnear these mines.” That article is accompanied by a nicely engraved folding plate showing a varietyof coal fossils. The whole assemblage of papers is representative of the range of scientific inquiryon the Continent at the turn of the eighteenth century.

■ [1742] Sendel, Nathaniel. Historia succinorum corpora aliena involvientum et naturaeopere pictorum et caolatorum. Leipzig: Gledistchium, 1742.

Folio. viii, [2], 328pp + 13 folding plates (after C. Boëtius) of insects and lichenentombed in amber. Engraved vignette on title-page. Two engraved head-pieces. Contemporary full calf, some wear on corners, with expert periodrebacking keeping original marbled end-papers. Armorial bookplate of “E. Bibl.Radcl” (Radcliffe Library, Oxford) with added later small ink stamp noting thisbeing a Bodlian Library Duplicate on front paste-down. Contemporarysignature of C. Miller on inside flyleaf, and initials C.M. on verso of title. Veryclean, wide-margined copy.

First edition. “The thoroughly remarkableand valuable detailed descriptive catalog ofsome of the specimens in the collection ofamber inclusions that had been assembled forAugust the Strong… and preserved in thefamous baroque palace of Dresden known asthe Zwinger… J.H. Langenhein, Harvard UBotanical Leaflet (v.20, 1964, p.226) claimsthat this is ‘the earliest work containingfigures of plants in amber’” (Sinkankas 5970).Nissen ZBI, 3807. Ward & Carozzi, 2023(reproducing the title-page on p.429). Missedby Wilson when preparing his “Bibliographyof Collection Catalogs.”


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First Colorplate Book Devoted to Mineralogy

■ [1743] Hebenstreit, Johann Ernst. Museum Richterianum: continens fossilia animalia,vegetabilia mar. Leipzig: Fritsch, 1743.

Folio (405 x 250mm). 56, 384, [18], 34pp + double-page frontispiece view ofthe Museum, an engraved portrait of Richter + 17 engraved plates, including14 original hand-colored [some heightened in gold] plates, with multiplemineral specimens on each plate, engraved by C.F. Boetius. Title-page in redand black, with an engraved vignette. Also with large illustrated engraved head-and tail-pieces. Text in double columns, Latin & German. Contemporaryleather (with gilt-stamped spine panels) and paste-paper marbled boards. Oldlight damp stain on top of last nine leaves, otherwise a very good and cleancopy, with fine plates.

First edition. Descriptive and illustrated catalogue of one of the largest naturalhistory collections of the period. “This large, complex work described thesplendid cabinet of natural curiosities gathered by [Johann Christoph] Richter[a Leipzig banker]… An outstanding feature of the work is the very high qualityof the engraved plates and the specially engraved vignettes” (Sinkankas,Gemology, 2831). Regarding the colored plates, Sinkankas notes: “Some copieshave been recorded with the [14] mineral/fossil plates hand water-colored &heightened in gold; it is not known if these were officially sponsored or merelycolored by [original] owners.” Writer and editor Wendell Wilson stated: “Themassive, systematically arranged catalogue of [Richter’s] collection (with itshand-colored engravings of 114 of his best specimens), is a landmark in thehistory of mineral literature, ranking as the first colorplate book devotedprimarily to mineralogy” (“Hebenstreit’s Museum Richterianum,” in The

Mineralogical Record, Sept.-Oct. 1990). In describing the two states (colored and uncolored) of theplates, Wilson observed, “apparently only four copies in colored state have survived. They are inthe DeGolyer Library at the University of Oklahoma, Norman; the Boston Public Library; thelibrary of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia; and the Richard Bideaux library inTucson.” Wilson—who noted the “careful use of metallic gold and silver paints for highlighting”on these plates—believed that the color-plate copies were “certainly ‘official’ products of thepublisher.” Hoover, Bibliotheca De Re Metallica, 392, cataloguing a copy lacking the portrait andwith the plates in the uncolored state. BM Nat. History II, p.806. Murray, III, p.127, noting“some copies are on large paper inwhich the plates are coloured byhand.” Nissen ZBI, 1869 (notnoting color plates). Ward &Carozzi, 1033. Wilson, TheHistory of Mineral Collecting, pp,94-95, 222. The plates in theFreilich apparently wereuncolored—in fact, the cataloguedescription did not even mentionthe presence of any plates(Sotheby’s 1/11/01, Lot 111).The Freilich copy also measuredslightly smaller (378 x 235 mm).


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■ [1744] Gersaint, Edmé François. Catalogueraisonné d’une collection… en tous genres de …Monsieur Bonnier de la Mosson… Paris: Barois…, 1744.

8vo. xiv, 234, [2]pp + engraved frontispiece ofshells and coral. Unidentified monogram stampon front paste-down and at bottom of title.Untrimmed copy in contemporary leather.

First edition. Rare sales catalogue prepared by Gersaint forthe auction of the extensive and important “cabinet ofcuriosities” assembled by Bonnier de la Masson, as well assome material from two other collections. The introductionprovides some useful descriptive information on thecollection’s use and acquisition. The French naturalistBuffon bought widely (shells and reptiles) at this sale.Grinke lists two other “such remarkable sales cataloguescompiled by the expert E.F. Gersaint,” one in 1736, the

other also in 1744 (From Wunderkammer to Museum, 9 and 10). Murray also lists three differentcatalogues by Gersaint, but not this particular one. Wilson, The History of Mineral Collecting, p.205.

■ [1745] Luther, Johann George. Historiae Naturalis Fossilium Caput de Terris… Leipzig:Imman, 1745.

4to, 36pp. Recent green morocco and cloth boards. Small ownership stamp ofJohannes Walther [with crossed geological hammers] on p.[2].

First edition. Luther’s dissertation on the natural history of fossils, presented before Johann ErnestHebenstreit (who two years earlier had been busy with his own project—the MuseumRichterianum).

Royal Dresden Museum Catalogue

■ [1749] Ludwig, Christian Gottleib. Terrae Musei Regii Dresdensis quas digessit descripsitillustravit D.C.G. Ludwig… Leipzig: Glenitsch, 1749.

Double folio. xvi, 298, [7]pp + 12 engraved plates (mostly of medallions andemblems). With engraved vignette on title and six engraved chapter head-pieces. Contemporary patterned cloth and marbled boards, slightly rubbed,otherwise a fine copy with very clean plates and text.

First edition. Fine descriptive catalogue of the mineral collection owned, at this time, by FrederickAugustus II, Elector of Saxony. The collection included many fossils. The illustrations actuallydepict the numerous emblematic covers of the specimen containers. Ludwig (1709-1773) was aphysician and botanist best known for his work on botanical philosophy, Institutiones historico-physicae regni vegetablis… (1742). His skill as classification was put to good use in this museumcatalogue. Murray, II, p.215. Wilson, The History of Mineral Collecting, p.212.


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Renaissance Thought on the Power of Stones

■ [1750] Leonardi, Camillo. The Mirror of Stones: in which the nature, generation, properties,virtues and various species of more than 200 different jewels… are distinctly described. London:Freeman, 1750.

8vo. 240 [i.e., 160- pp.120-199 misnumbererd as 200-240]. Contemporaryfull leather, recent period-style rebacking, new end-papers; very good copy.

First edition in English of Leonardi’s classic Renaissance work on mineralogy and the occultpower of gemstones, Speculum Palidum Clarissi Artium, first published in Venice, 1502. “Inaddition to summarizing the contents, the translator (preface) provides a lively and amusingaccount of the rarity of previous editions and the lengths to which one English nobleman went toobtain a copy on the Continent” (Sinkankas 3896). “Very rare” (Henry Sotheran, 1956). Hoover,Bibliotheca De Re Metallica, 527. Ward & Carozzi, 1368.

■ [1750] Lucanus, Johann Gottfried. Dissertationem Physico-Theologicam qua Geogenia etCataclysmologia Whistoniana dubia redditur. Halle: Furstiana, 1750.

4to. 40, [4]pp. Old damp stain in last half of text. Untrimmed copy in recentgreen morocco and cloth boards. Small ownership stamp of Johannes Walther[with small crossed geological hammers] on bottom of title-page.

First edition. Review of the cosmology of the Earth, and especially concerning the idea of theUniversal Deluge, as expressed by William Whitson in his A New Theory of the Earth (London.1696). Lucanus presented this paper as his dissertation before Johann Gottlieb Krüger.

■ [1751] Hill, John. A Review of the Works of the Royal Society of London; containingAnimadiversions on such of the Papers as deserve Particular Observation. In Eight Parts. London:Griffiths, 1751.

4to. viii, 265, [3]pp. Old light damp stain along top edge. Armorial bookplatesof Sir Edward B. Baker. Contemporary calf leather and marbled boards, withleather spine label.

First edition. Famous satire on the Royal Society by this infamous cranky London physician whodid write a number of serious books on a variety of topics. “Hill’s scientific labors were colored by

his frequent satirical attacks on his contemporaries; deniedmembership in the Royal Society of London, he attacked thatbody in volumes such as his biting Review of the Works of theRoyal Society” (Dictionary of Scientific Biography, VI, pp.400-01). Hill presented eight “papers,” one each on the arts,antiquities, medicines, miracles, zoophytes, animals,vegetables, and minerals. Sinkankas 2945, for Hill’s text onfossils and gemstones.


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■ [1752] Scilla, Agostino. De Corporibus Marinis Lapidescentibus Quae DefossaReperiuntur. Rome: Angeli Rotilli, 1752.

4to. vii, 84, [8]pp + 30 leaves of plates. With engraved frontispiece [with thetitle in Latin, dated 1751] and vignette title-page. Title in red and black.Bookplates of F.A. Pouchet and E. Bugaille (with engraved images ofshells) on front paste-down. Old damp stain through corner of textand plates. Untrimmed copy in contemporary blue boards, rubbed,and marbled-paper spine.

Second edition in Latin of Scilla’s La vana speculazione disingannata del senso[Vain Speculation undeceived by Sense] (1670), a study on the fossils ofSouthern Italy and an early geological work on the deluge theory. “While hecriticizes those who doubt the organic nature of fossils, he is inclined toconsider reliquiae diluvianae—remains of the Mosaic Deluge” (Jahn, TheLying Stones, p.167). But Scilla did hold to the theory that certain fossils hadorigins as marine organisms. Scilla “could not be any clearer in hiscomparison between the abundant living shells on the beach and those in thePliocene coastal coquinas of Sicily” (Ward & Carozzi, p.12). Wonderfulsymbolic frontispiece “showing ‘Sense’ with the eye of Reason [on his breast]demonstrating to ‘Vain Speculation’ the organic nature of a fossil sea-urchinand shark’s tooth” (Rudwick, pp.56- 58). Beringer cites the 1670 Naplesedition as one of his sources. Dictionary of Scientific Biography XII, p.257. Ward & Carozzi, 2005(reproducing the title-page of this edition on p.417). The first edition in Latin was published inRome, 1747.

■ [1753] Klein, Jacob Theodor. Tentamen Methodi Ostracologicae siv Dispositio NaturalisConchlidum et Concharum in suas Classes, Genera et Species… Leyden: Wishoff, 1753.

4to. [10], 177, [35], 44, 16, [2]pp + 12 copper-plate engravings. Title in redand black. Contemporary full polished calf, some flaking of gilt-stamping onspine, author’s name and date neatly penned on front cover, otherwisea fine copy.

First edition. Detailed classification, drawing on the work of scientistsand collections, especially George Rumpf and Filippo Buonanni (withreferences to the illustrations in their works). Klein also includes a sectionin which he “throws light” on the formation and coloring of shellsfollowed by a commentary on Pliny’s writings about shells. Klein (1685-1759) wrote a number of book on a variety of natural history topics—from sea urchins to fish to birds. “A principal concern in his monographsis classification. Klein’s taxonomic method was based entirely in externalcharacteristics… and he vigorously opposed any method, including theLinnaean system, based on characters not visible externally” (Dictionary ofScientific Biography VII, p.401. Handsome, delicately drawn plates of 228specimen of shells. BM Nat. History II, p.992. Graesse IV, p.28.Nissen ZBI, 2211.


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■ [1753] Stobaeus, Kilan. Opera in quibus petrefactorum, numismatum et antiquitatumhistoria illustratur, in unum volumen collecta. Danzig: Knochium, 1753.

4to. [12], 327, [7]pp With 17 wood and copper “plates”—including sevenfolding plates [two folding leaves with two “plates” each], two “plates” withinthe text. Collates complete. Untrimmed copy in later morocco and boards, fine.

First printing of this posthumous work which includes a brief biography of the author (1690-1742). Stobaeus covers all of the theories regarding the origin of fossils, quoting from all of themajor authors, including Mylius, Scheuchzer, Büttner, Worm, Lhwyd, Helwing, and others. Healso covers shells, sea urchins, shark’s teeth, ancient petroglyphs, and coins. BM Nat. History V,p.2023. Graesse VI, p.501.

■ [1755] Dezallier d’Argenville, A.-J. L’Histoire Naturelle Éclaircie dans une de ses PartiesPrincipales, L’Oryctologie, qui traite des terres, des pierres, des métaux, des mineraux, et autresfossiles… Paris: de Bure L’Ainé, 1755.

4to. xvi, 560, [2]p. Engraved frontispiece [noted as Plate 1] depicting“L’Oryctologie” [mythic woman gathering shells] plus 25 engraved plates. Titlein red and black. Contemporary full mottled calf with decorative gilt-stampedspine, red leather spine label, original marbled end-papers; slight cracking infront joint, otherwise a fine, bright copy.

First complete edition, preceded by a 1742 workwhich only covered conchology. This 1755 editionpresents a survey of mineralogical andpaleontological knowledge of the day, and openswith a 36-page Critical Analysis of works onLithology and Conchyology. The authors discussedinclude Aldrovandi, Rumpf, Lange, Theophrastus,Pliny, Bauhin, de Boodt, Major, Boccone, Lister,Scheuchzer, Lhwyd, Woodward, and Bourguet—all represented in the Jahn Collection. “One of theauthor’s famous and popular treatises on naturalhistory subjects, this one describing all classes ofmineral substances according to a system devisedby him by which they are divided into two broadgroups: (1) substances occurring naturally in thecrust, and (2) those which do not”—Sinkankas1680 (who also calls attention to the “many finelyattractive plates”). “Another of the natural historiesthat enrich the [Hoover] library, this one was theproduct of a writer for the Encyclopédie, a naturalistand biographer who assembled his own great cabinet of stones and metals and minerals”—Hoover,Bibliotheca De Re Metallica, 264. Plate 17 depicts “Parties du Corps Humain Petrifiées,” includingan illustration of Scheuchzer’s “Diluvian Man.” Graesse II p.194. Ward & Carozzi, 660(reproducing the title-page on p.181).


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Classic English Natural History—The Illustrator’s Copy

■ [1755] Ellis, John. An essay towards a natural history of the corallines, and other marineproductions of the like kind, commonly found on the coasts of Great Britain and Ireland. London, TheAuthor, 1755.

4to. xvii, 103, [1]pp + engraved frontispiece + 39 engraved plates (including 20folding plates) some from drawings by Ehret + a four-page manuscript“Catalogue of the zoophytes and other marine productions in Ellis’ Essay onthe Corallines” prepared by Thomas G. Rylands in 1841 (penned in red andblack), bound between C and C2. With armorial bookplates of ThomasGlazebrook Rylands and John Paul Rylands on the front paste-down. Also witha long manuscript note regarding this particular copy by T.G. Rylands on insideblank flyleaf (dated 1894) and his signature on the title-page (1841).Contemporary full polished calf with recent leather rebacking, new spine label.

First edition. Presentation copy from Ellis “to my worthy and obliging Friend, GeorgeDyonisius Ehret”—the botanical artist who drew some of the original delicateillustrations used in this work. On p.viii, Ellis describes Ehret, who accompanied the

author on his exploring expeditions to the “Seaside,” as “a Gentleman universally known to thelearned Botanists of Europe, for his exquisite Manner of designing and painting Plants andFlowers.” For this work, Ellis was awarded the Copley medal of the Royal Society. As theDictionary of National Biography noted, this work established Ellis’s reputation “as one of the mostacute observers of his time.” The Hoover catalogue echoed this statement, adding that “Linnaeusnamed a plant after [Ellis]” (Hoover, Bibliotheca De Re Metallica, 277, which did not have thefolding plate of Mr Cuff ’s Aquatic Microscope, present in our copy as the last plate). BM Nat.History II, p.523. Nissen ZBI, 591. The wonderful frontispiece to this “handsome” volume isreprinted in Knight’s Natural Science Books in English 1600-1900, p.96.

And The French Edition

■ [1756] Ellis, John. Essai sur l’histoire naturelle des corallines, et d’autres productions marinesde même genre, qu’on trouve communement sur les côtes de la Grande-Bretagne et d’Irelande. TheHague: Pierre de Hondt, 1756.

4to. xvi, 125pp + engraved frontispiece + 39 plates (fivefolding). Title in red and black. Marbled end-papers.Armorial bookplate (printed in green) “Ex LibrisMarchionis Salsae” as well as another unindentfiedarmorial bookplate. Contemporary full mottled calfwith decorative gilt-stamped spine. Very nice copy.

First French edition of this work by “a bright star of naturalhistory” and “the main support of natural history in England”(Linnaeus). Same plates as in the English edition, but herebound after the text. Plate 38—“The manner in which the SeaPolypes call’d Corallines produce their Young”—is printed herewithout the six columns of printed text present on the Englishplate because the publisher refused to pay the extra cost. So Ellisre-wrote the notes into a chapter which appears here in

French—translated by J.H.S. Allamand—as Chapter 12. BM Nat. History II, p.523.


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■ [1757] Mendes da Costa, Emanuel. A Natural History of Fossils. Vol I, Part 1 [all published].London: Davis & Reymers, 1757.

4to. vi, [2], 294pp + one plate. Gift bookplate of The Institution of Surveyors[gift of member W. Blount, 1874] on the front paste-down. Contemporary halfcalf and marbled boards, recent rebacking.

First edition. “The first and only part of a projected work intended to be pursued ‘through thewhole of the Fossil kingdom,’ but probably stopped because of the expense which the authorlaments in his preface as being so large that even advance sales to subscribers did not defray costsof this initial volume… The preface also states that his mineralogy is prepared under a new system,but this seems not to be unique because he classified fossils, that is, minerals, according to theirexternal characters primarily… This work is of interest to gemologists because it describes in detaila large number of marbles and porphyries used for decorative purposes, and indeed most of thework, from page 185 to the end, is so occupied. Rare.”—Sinkankas 4378. Mendes da Costa(1717-1791) was a professional mineralogist who also served for a while as foreign secretary to theRoyal Society. BM Nat. History VII, p.825. Ward & Carozzi, 1539.

■ [1758] Schreber, Johann Christian David. Lithographia Halensis… Halle: Curt, 1758.

58pp. Recent green morocco and cloth boards, plain rear wrapper bound in.Small ownership stamp of Johannes Walther [with crossed geological hammers]on bottom of title-page. Repair made to verso of title, otherwise fine.

First edition. Description and classification (by the Linnean method) of the stones, minerals, andfossils found in this region of Germany, presented as Schreber’s dissertation before Joachim Lange(1698-1765), a professor of philosophy and mathematics at Halle (and owner of a large privatemineral collection—see Wilson, The History of Mineral Collecting, p.179). Schreber dedicated thiswork in the most glowing of terms to Carl von Linné; not surprisingly, Schreber went on to studywith Linnaeus (presenting his thesis in 1760) and he later edited a ten-volume edition of Linneantheses and orations (Amoenitates Academicae, 1785-90). Schreber also authored many botanicalpapers, stressing the Linnean classification system. Ward & Carozzi, 1323, citing only a 1759edition of this paper under Lange’s name. That edition (80pp) also has a different title-page. Thelast leaf of this 1758 edition, H1, concludes with an errata to Schreber’s text, but has a catchword[“Mon-”], suggesting that Lange’s reply may have been appended. OCLC catalogues both versions(e.g, 1758, 58pp; 1759, 80pp); BM Nat. History catalogues neither.

■ [1759] Scilla, Agostino. De Corporibus Marinis LapidescentibusQuae Defossa Reperiuntur. Rome: Zempel, 1759.

4to. [6], 82, [6] + 30 plates [Plates XI and XXIII numbered twice].Lacks frontispiece. Title in red and black with engravedvignette. Charles Atwood Kofoid’s copy, with his large-formatbookplate. Cloth and marbled boards, old damp stain along bottomof text and plates.

Second printing of the Latin edition of Scilla’s La vana speculazionedisingannata dal senso. Ward & Carozzi, 2004.


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■ [1760] Lhwyd, Edward. Lithophylacii Britannici Ichnographia sive Lapidum aliorumqueFossilium Britannicorum singulari figura insignum… Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1760.

8vo. [18], 156, [5]pp + 25 folding plates. With three engravings and twowoodcuts in text. With signature of John Weal Jr. as well as a neatly pennednote by Weal regarding Lhwyd and this book on the free front end-paper(dated 1815 and 1834), with later signature of T. Price; also with theattractively illustrated engraved bookplate of Hugh Boulter, with the text of“Boulter’s Museum” and “Dealers in curious Books and Antiquities inGeneral.” Contemporary full calf with decorative spine and spine label, frontboard detached.

Second edition, with the plates re-engraved and with some alterations to numbering. Edited byWilliam Huddesford who was then keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, and thus was in charge ofLhwyd’s fossils. Ward & Carozzi, 1384. Jahn, “A note on the editions of Edward Lhwyd’sLithophylacii Britannici ichnographia.” Hoover, Bibliotheca De Re Metallica, 534. In his calendar ofBritish book collectors, A Roll of Honour, Hazlitt called Mr. Boulter’s bookplate “curious.”Purchased from Quaritch, 1960.

■ [1761] Schuette, Johann Heinrich. Oryctographia Jenensis, sive fossilium et mineralium inagro Jenensi. Jena: Güthuius, 1761.

12mo. 140pp. Recent morocco and cloth. Small ownership stamp of JohannesWalther [with crossed geological hammers] on bottom of title-page,otherwise fine.

Second edition, revised, of Schütte’s dissertation, first published when he was a youngman in 1720 (Leipzig, 110pp; see Hoover, Bibliotheca De Re Metallica, 733 and BM Nat. HistoryIV, p.1867). A professor in Jena, Schütte (1694-1774) writes here about all manners of stonesand minerals, including lusus naturae. This edition includes a brief “epilogue” from theanonymous editor.

■ [1763] Bertrand, É[lie]. Dictionnaire universel des fossiles propres et des fossilesaccidentels… The Hague: Pierre Gosse, Junior and Daniel Pinet, 1763.

8vo. [2], xxxii, 284; [4]. 256pp. Two volumes bound together [as usual]. Titlesin red and black. Contemporary full vellum over boards, small red leather spinelabel; slight soiling on boards otherwise a fine copy.

First edition of this “comprehensive encyclopedia of minerals, fossils, ores, stones, etc., and withnumerous entries for gemstones, with brief definitions and with references from whichinformation derived… Valuable for its indications of contemporary knowledge”—Sinkankas 601.“Extremely useful compendium in Latin, French and German” (Ward & Carozzi, p.14). Ward &Carozzi, 193 (reproducing the title-page on p.85).


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■ [1764] Linné, Carl von. Museum S:ae R:ae M:tis Ludovicae Ulricae reginae Suecorum… inquo animalia rariora, exotica, imprimis insecta & conchilia describuntur & determinanturProdromi instar editum. Stockholm: Salvii, 1764.

8vo. 730, [2]; 110pp. Two parts bound (as issued) together. Title in red andblack. Contemporary half calf and marbled boards, some wear on spine ends,otherwise a very good copy.

First edition. Two of Linnaeus’s three “museological works.” The mainwork here is a descriptive catalogue of the Natural Cabinet atDrottningholm belonging to Queen Louise Ulrika. The second title inthis volume is Linnaeus’s Museum S:ae R:ae M:tis Adolph Friderici regisSvecorum… in quo animalia rariora, imprimis & exotica: aves, amphibia,pisces describuntur (1764). This is a supplement to Linnaeus’s 1754catalogue of a collection presented by King Adolph Friderick to theZoological Museum of the University of Uppsala. BritishMuseum, Catalogue of the Works of Linnaeus, 1095a (citing publicationof both titles in one volume, although they were also issued separately).Murray, II, p.191.

■ [1767] Beringer, Johann Bartholomew Adam. Lithographiae Wirceburgenis, decentisLapidum figuratorum, a protiori insectformium, prodigiosis imaginibus exornata. Frankfurt &Leipzig: Tobias Goebhardt, Bookseller at Bambergen and Würtzberg, 1767.

Folio. Engraved frontispiece + 96pp + 21 plates. Title-page with engravedvignette. Contemporary half vellum over marbled boards, portions of themarbled paper on the front board have been scraped away. Text and plates fine.

Second edition [re-issue]. As Jahn pointed out, this 1767 edition of Beringer’s famous work “issimply a re-issue of the sheets of the 1726 imprint with the addition of a new title-page and thecancellation of the dedication, the dedicatory epistle, andHueber’s Corollaria Medica” (“A note on the ‘editions’ ofBeringer’s Lithographiae Wirceburgensi,” p.150). How abookseller in Würtzburg got hold of the original sheets(including the plates) of Beringer’s self-suppressed book, 27years after the author’s death, and convinced a printer inFrankfurt to print up a new title-page, remains a biblio-mystery. Jahn, however, noted, “The re-issue of the work asa literary curiosity is often attributed to one of Beringer’s[two] sons” (Dictionary of Scientific Biography II, p.16). Butthen one asks, “To what end? Why re-issue a work that wasthe record of an obvious hoax perpetrated upon ones ownfather?” Grinke From Wunderkammer to Museum, 52 (1767re-issue). Ward & Carozzi, 183.


72

Corrected and Enhanced Edition of the Finest Shell Book

■ [1770] Lister, Martin. Historiae siveSynopsis methodicae conchyliorum ettabularum anatomicarum. Oxford:Clarendon, 1770.

Folio. iv, + copper-printed plates (afew folding) numbered to 1059 on439ff; 6 + 7pp + 22 plates; DuoIndices ad Synopsis MethodicamConchyliorum, (Oxford, 1770),77pp. Collates complete to OCLCcollation (although Plate 4 is presentin this copy). A fine, untrimmedcopy in recent half red morocco overboards. An exceptionally clean andbright copy.

Second complete edition [first pub. 1685-92] of this famous shell book, designed by itsauthor to “include all the land, freshwater andmarine shells then known, both recent andfossil,” producing in the end “the firstpractical systematic work on conchology”(Wilkins). This 1770 edition has the samesubdivisions as in the previous edition, butwith corrections made to the previous erraticplate numbering. The Indices, as well as sixpages of notes by Lister, are new to this edition. Of this second edition, Brunet commented: “Ifthe first edition was notable due to the quality of its plates, this [edition] has the advantage of twoIndexes added by the publisher, which facilitate the use of the book and correct the lack of orderin the arrangement of the shells. There are also more than six pages of Dr. Lister’s remarks andobservations, in English, sent to the publisher by a London informant” (III, 1097). WilliamHuddesford, Curator of the Ashmolean Museum, oversaw publication of this massive work, usingthe original copper plates which Lister had bequeathed to Oxford. Most of plates had been madeby Lister’s wife, Anna, and his daughter, Susanna, over a period of years (ca.1680-1690), from thetheir own original illustrations. “The figures are so accurate, and all are so characteristic, that evento this day they are indispensable to the conchologist, and this remarkable volume forms one ofthe most valuable and standard works in this department of zoology” (Allibone, quoting thenaturalist William Swainson who was himself an expert in conchology and author of numerousbooks on the subject). BM Nat. Hist. 1155. Geikie p.76 (“a remarkable history of all the shellsthen known, with accurate plates”). Keynes, Martin Lister, 49. Shell Books (1684-1912) and Shells,#2. Nissen ZBI, 2529. Ward & Carozzi, 1393. Wilkins, Guy T., “Notes on the HistoriaConchyliorum of Martin Lister (1638-1712)” in The Journal of the Society for the Bibliography ofNatural History, 3:4, Jan, 1957.


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■ [1773] Buonanni, Filippo et al. Rerum Naturalium Historia NempeQuadrupedum, Insectorus, Piscium Voriorumque Marinorum CorporumFossilium, Plantarum Exoticarum ac Praesertim Testaceorum Exsistium inMuseo Kircheriano. Rome: Zempelliano, 1773-82.

Folio, two volumes. xl, 259pp + engraved frontispiece + 51 engraved plates,with five large engraved chapter head-pieces and six large tail-pieces; xxvii,357pp + engraved dedication leaf + 59 plates. Each title in red and blackwith engraved vignette. Total of 110 full-page plates. Slight occasionaloffsetting on plates in Volume I [which previously had been boundthroughout the text]. Later polished calf over contemporary marbledboards. A fine set.

New edition, based partially upon Buonanni’s 1709 catalogue of AthanasiusKircher’s famous private museum, Museum Kircherianum, although Volume I [1773]is the first printing of the natural history portion of the collection, edited byGiovanni Antonio Battara who also added extensive annotations to Buonanni’soriginal text as well as a new classification method and new illustrations. This volumecovers items relating to quadrupeds, reptiles, insects, fish, exotic plants, and fossils.Volume II is devoted exclusively shells, again expanding from Buonanni’s earlierwork, and includes a catalogue of the shell collection of Peter Paul Scali. The second [1782]volume includes 59 attractive plates of shells; Buonanni’s 1709 catalogue of the Kircher Museumincluded 48 plates of shell specimens. See From Wunderkammer to Museum, 35. Wilson,The History of Mineral Collecting, p.215, thinking that the 1782 volume was another “edition” ofthe 1773 volume [although it clearly states “Pars Secunda” on the title-page]. BM Nat. History I,p.287. Brunet I, 1086. Dictionary of Scientific Biography II, pp.591-2. Graesse I, p.408. Murray,II, p.134.

■ [1773] Reuss, August Christian von. Dissertatio Physica de Terrae Motuum Caussis…Tübingen: Fuesian, 1773.

8vo. 24pp. Recent green morocco and cloth. Small ownership stamp ofJohannes Walther [with crossed geological hammers] on bottom of title-page,otherwise very good.

First edition. Reuss’s dissertation on the movements of the earth, including discussions aboutearthquakes, minerals, and the appearance of fossils.

■ [1774] Hill, John. Theophrastus’s History of Stones. With an English Version, and Notes,Including the Modern History of Gems, etc. described by that Author, and of many other of the NativeFossils… And with an IDEA of a Natural and Artificial Method of Fossils. London: Printed for theAuthor, 1774.

8vo. viii, 343, [45]pp. Later half calf over silk-covered boards; slight foxingotherwise a fine copy.

Second edition in English, enlarged; the first English ed. was published in 1746. Hill added tothis second edition two indices to Greek words used by Theophrastus, some “observations on thenew Swedish acid,” and Hill’s ideas about fossils. Hoover, Bibliotheca De Re Metallica, 784, citing1746 ed. Sinkankas 6592. Ward & Carozzi, 2168.


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■ [1776] Edwards, George. Elements of Fossilogy: Or, An arrangement of fossils, into classes,orders, genera, and species; with their characters… London: White, 1776.

8vo. [8], 120pp. Untrimmed copy in recent brown morocco and marbledboards; scattered foxing, otherwise a fine copy.

First edition. A posthumous publication of an uncommon work by Edwards (1694-1773) whowas best known for his popular The History of Birds and Gleanings of Natural History, and for histalent as an illustrator of natural history topics. Edwards apologizes for using the word “fossilogy,”which breaks a rule of grammar “that no compound word is to be formed of other words, whichare of different languages.” The OED cites Edwards’ book for the first appearance of this word, bywhich, of course, he meant “paleontology”—but that word was not coined until 1834, “almostsimultaneously by two eminent authors, Ducrotay de Blainville and Fischer von Waldheim”(Zittel, p.363). Allibone attributes this book to a different George Edwards from the one describedin the Dictionary of National Biography.

■ [1778] Born, Ignaz Edler von. Index rerum naturalium Musei CaesareiVindobonensis. Pars 1, Testacea [all published]… Vienna: Kraus, 1778.

8vo. [40], 458, [82] + one colored plate. Engraved title-page. Minor old dampstain on gutter of first eight leaves, otherwise a very clean copy in contemporaryhalf red morocco and marbled boards.

First edition. Rare catalogue of the Royal Imperial Natural History Collection inVienna, prepared by Born (1742-1791), the Hungarian mineralogist and paleontologistwho had himself assembled a large collection of minerals and fossils (see hisLithophylacium Bornianum, 1772-75). Born was active in the building of mineralcollections and “Naturalien Kabinets” for other owners (e.g., Archduchess Maria Anna).“In 1776, Born was called to Vienna by Empress Maria Theresa and given the prestigiousjob of overseeing the curation, organization and growth of the Imperial mineralcollection. Two years later he published an index of the collection… But following the

Empress’s death in 1780 he abandoned the task of writing a more detailed description” (Wilson,The History of Mineral Collecting, p.106). In 1780, Born issued a second edition of this work, alsopublished by Kraus, under the title Testacea Musei Caesarei Vindobonensis, folio with 18 coloredplates; see Shell Books (1684-1912) and Shells, #10. Dictionary of Scientific Biography II, p.315. BMNat. History I, p.202. Murray, II, p.245. See Nissen ZBI, 470.

■ [1778] Pliny, the Elder. Historiae naturalis liber nonus deaquatilium natura. Leyden: Haak & Luchtmans, 1778.

8vo. xvi, 198, [14]pp. Georges Cuvier’s copy, with hisstamp and the stamp of the Museé d’Histoire Naturelleon the title-page. Charles Atwood Kofoid’s bookplateon front pastedown. Contemporary half leather andmarbled boards, front joint cracked and spine scuffed.

“C’est le text de l’ed. Juntine de 1562 collationné av. plusieursanc. éditions” (Graesse V, 343). Includes accounts of fossils andshells—naturally of great interest to Cuvier. Purchased fromZeitlin & Ver Brugge.


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■ [1778] Whitehurst, John. An inquiry into the original state and formation of the earth;deduced from facts and the laws of nature; to which is added an Appendix, contaning some generalobservations on the strata in Derbyshire… London: Copper, 1778.

4to. [14], ii, [2], 199pp + nine plates on four leaves (two folding).Contemporary full leather, worn around the edges, with recentleather rebacking. Slight foxing on folding map, otherwise a very clean, wide-margined copy.

First edition. “This well-known work, partly speculative in nature,established Whitehurst as the first proponent of the principle of aworldwide orderly superposition of strata, each with its characteristiclithology and fossils” (Hoover, Bibliotheca De Re Metallica, 884). “Thiswork was the last effort of the fantastic English School of Cosmogonists.Amid absurd speculations as to the condition of Chaos and otherequally visionary topics, Whitehurst wrote well on organic remains, andshowed that he clearly grasped the stratigraphical succession of theformation in Derbyshire and other parts of England” (Geikie).Dictionary of Scientific Biography XIV, pp.311. Norman Library 2236.Ward & Carozzi, 2327.

■ [1780] Soldani, Ambrogio. Saggio Orittografico; ovvero, Osservazioni sopra le terre nautiliticheed ammonitiche della Toscana. Con appendice o indice Latino ragionato de’ piccoli testacei, e d’altrifossili d’origin marina per schiarimento dell’opera… Siena: Vincenzo Passini Carli e Figlie, 1780.

4to. vii, 146pp. Engraved frontispiece + 22 (of 25) engraved folding plates[numbered 1-22]. Lacks plates 23-25. Old damp stain along bottom of text.Georges Cuvier’s copy, with his stamp and the stamp of the Museé d’HistoireNaturelle on the title-page. Untrimmed copy in recent half polished calf overmarbled boards.

First edition. Study of fossil shells found in Tuscanyby this “ardent naturalist [1736-1808]. In his studiesof Pliocene marine formations of Tuscany and ofpreexistent ones bordering the Pliocene sea he provedto be an accomplished geologist, describing with greataccuracy the lithological, stratigraphic, andpaleontological characteristics of the deposits.Although his emphasis on the study of microscopicfossils (he described and drew hundreds of them,from mollusks to foraminifers) entitles him to beconsidered a paleontologist, Soldani neverapproached paleontological research as an end initself ” (Dictionary of Scientific Biography XII, p.517).Ward & Carozzi, 2083.


76

Rare Mineralogical Works

■ [1779] [Schultz, Ernst Christoph] Beschreibung eines besondern Welt-Auges, welches in demCabinette eines Natur-Freundes zu Hamburg befindlich. Hamburg: Reuss, [1779].

8vo. 27pp + engraved hand-colored frontispiece. Sinkankas 5891.

BOUND WITH:

Bemerkungen über einen monstreusen Canarien-Vogel. Hamburg: Reuss, [1780].

18pp + hand-colored frontispiece of a giant yellow canary. Not in BM Nat.History Suppl.

BOUND WITH:

Characterisirung einer kleinen Art von Taschen-Krebsen, deren Rückenschild einnatürliches Menschengesicht vorstellet. Hamburg: Reuss, [1780].

20pp+ hand-colored frontispiece showing two crabs. BM Nat. History Suppl.p.1165.

BOUND WITH:

Entdeckung einer dem Kreuz-Steine wesentlichen Entstehungs-Art der Kreuz-Figur… Hamburg: Reuss, [1780?].

38pp + hand-colored engraved frontispiece of a mineral specimen in a cabinet.Ward & Carozzi, 1998.

BOUND WITH:

Vom Regenbogen-Achat, den der Verfasser dieses Briefes zuerst an die Pariser Academie…Hamburg: Reuss, [1777].

23pp + hand-colored engraved frontispiece of rare agates. Sinkankas 5892 (“not seen”).

First editions. A collection of five very rare monographs by Schultz (1740-1810), a Germannaturalist who also formed an important collection of minerals. Originally published separately,these interesting papers are bound together here in contemporary plain boards. All are fine copieswith very strong type impressions. The first work is a description of some hydrophane opals from

the author’s mineral cabinet; the second describes a giant yellow canary,with a handsome frontispiece; the third is a paper on crabs that appearto have human faces on their shells; the fourth item, with its interestingcolored frontispiece of a mineral specimen in its cabinet drawer,discusses a staurolite (or fairy cross); the fifth is a rare paper on thecharacteristics of certain agates, which Schultz had read before theAcademy in 1777. As noted above, two of the works are cited bySinkankas, although he was unable to examine copies personally. Alsosee Wilson, The History of Mineral Collecting, p.192, citing an 1818edition of Schultz’s collection catalogue. The Freilich Auction offered asingle copy of the last monograph, which sold for $2,280. All of thesemonographs are easily miscatalogued (see OCLC) as Schultz’s namedoes not appear on their title-pages, while those of his dedicatees (Born,Buffon, Daubenton, Heinitz, Pabst von Ohain) are present.


77

Colorplate Book on Belgian Fossils

■ [1784] Burtin, François-Xavier de. Oryctographie de Bruxelles, ou, Description des fossilestant naturels qu’accidentels découverts jusqu’à ce jour dans les environs de cette ville. [Brussels]: de leMaire, 1784.

Folio. 152pp + engraved title-page + 32 engraved plates, engraved in brown andcolored by hand. Extra frontis portrait of Burtin, from another source, tippedto the inside flyleaf. Untrimmed copy in contemporary leather over marbledboards, some wear on edges and spine, ends chipped, rear joint starting. Veryclean text and plates.

First edition. Detailed study of fossils discovered near Brussels by Burtin (1743-1818), aphysician and naturalist. Described as the “most beautiful and most attractive book on Belgianfossils ever published.” A tall, untrimmed copy of this work with the complete complement ofhand-colored plates. BM Nat. History 291, citing 32 plates. Nissen ZBI, 769. Ward & Carozzi,410. The Freilich copy, which sold for $3,300, only had 21 colored plates.

■ [1785] Boehmer, George Rudolph. Bibliotheca Scriptorum Historiae NaturalisOeconomiae Aliarumque Artium Ac Scientiarum… Leipzig: Johann Friedrich Jr., 1785-1789.

Nine volumes, 8vos. With illustrated title pages in Latin and German. Boundfor the Athenaeum Club, London, in 1833, in blue cloth, with the Athenaeumgift bookplate on the front paste-down of six volumes, representing a gift fromGeorge Bellas Greenough—and with Greenough’s own armorial bookplate onthe other three volumes. Nice association copy of this very good, scarce set.

First edition. Bibliographical guide to works on natural history published from the fifteenthcentury through the eighteenth. Titles often include references to reviews or commentary. Fiveparts arranged in nine volumes. Includes General Works (2 v.), Zoology (2 v.), Phytology (2 v.),Mineralogy (2 v.), and Hydrology (1 v.). Lengthy name index (including a separate one for

anonymous works) included at the end ofthe last volume (pp.432-740). Volume Iincludes a list of works relating to naturalhistory collections and museums (pp.369-411), and hence Murray naturally citesthis set in his “Bibliography ofBibliographies” (II, p.3). Boehmer, theauthor of many works on natural history,also taught medicine at the Univ. ofWittenberg. George Bellas Greenough(1778-1855) was a “wealthy geographerand geologist who studied at Eton,Cambridge, Göttingen, and under Wernerat Freiberg. He was a great admirer of theEarl of Bute’s collection. He served as thefirst president of the Geological Society(1807-1813), and he built a geologicalcollection (minerals, fossils, rocks) of hisown later acquired by University College

in London” (Wilson, The History of Mineral Collecting, p.87). Greenough’s books included CriticalExamination of the First Principles of Geology (1819). BM Nat. History I, p.184. Graesse I, p.461.


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■ [1784] Kirwan, Richard. Elements of Mineralogy. London: Elmsley, 1784.

8vo. xviii, 412, [12]pp. Signature of “A. Bain” on corner of front paste-down(and the signature repeated below “Finis” on p.412). Contemporary full polishedcalf with red leather spine label, front joint starting, otherwise a fine copy.

First edition of the “First systematic treatise on mineralogy that is based on the chemicalcompositions of minerals” (Sinkankas 3430). “Classifying minerals using their chemicalcomposition was one of this Irish chemist’s finest works and the first such systematic treatment inEnglish” (Hoover, Bibliotheca De Re Metallica, 486). Kirwan (1733-1812) based his work on aclose study of the 7,331 mineral specimens in the Leskean collection. Kirwan was later presentedwith a gold medal by the Royal Dublin Society for his help in the acquisition of the Leskeancollection for their museum. Kirwan has also been proclaimed “The Nestor of English Chemistry.”The former owner, “A. Bain,” may be Alexander Bain, author of The Sense and the Intellect(London, 1855). Dictionary of Scientific Biography VII, pp.387-89. Ward & Carozzi, 1261.

■ [1789] [White, Gilbert] The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, in the county ofSouthampton: with engravings and an appendix. London: Printed by T. Bensley, 1789.

4to. [5], 468 [i.e. 466], [13]pp + folding frontispiece view + extra engravedtitle-page + seven copperplate engraved plates. Contemporary full diced calfwith decorative gilt-stamping on covers and edges, bound by Treble [with histicket on the front paste-down], with expert rebacking with original backstriplaid down,; all edges gilt, original marbled end-papers. Some foxing on plates,otherwise a fine, wide-margined copy.

First edition of this classic work in local natural history, “The premier book of Nature Study inthe English language” (Gunther, Early Medical and Biological Science, p.186). White’s book—written in a series of letters, most addressed to the naturalist Thomas Pennant—opens with adescription of fossils in the area, illustrated with an engraved plate. Martin, A Bibliography ofGilbert White, pp.90-96. Norman Library 2235. Ward & Carozzi, 2325. Wood p.625.

■ [1786] Whitehurst, John. An inquiry into the original state and formation of the earth;deduced from facts and the laws of nature. London: Bent, 1786.

4to. [10] 283pp + engraved frontispiece portrait + seven folding plates.Contemporary calf and marbled boards, some wear on ends and joints;armorial emblem stamped in gilt on front cover. Portrait foxed with someoffsetting onto title-page, otherwise a fine copy.

Second edition, enlarged. Hoover, 886. Ward & Carozzi, 2328.

■ [1794] Schmidel, Casimir Christoph. Descriptio itineris per Helvetiam Galliam etGermaniae partem ann. 1773 et 1774 instituti, mineralogici, botanici et historici argumenti.4to. Erlangen: Palm, 1794.

4to. 102pp + two folding delicately hand-colored plates. A fine, untrimmedand unopened copy bound in later plain wrappers.

First edition. Scarce description of a journey through Switzerland, France (to Normandy) andGermany, with a focus on minerals and botany, by this Swiss geologist and professor of medicine(1718-1792). This edition was prepared by Johann Christian Daniel Schreber. Hoover describedone of Schmidel’s earlier papers (1753) on fossil metals and minerals (see Bibliotheca De ReMetallica, 728). Dictionary of Scientific Biography, XII, 185.


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Greatest 18th Century Work on Fossil Fish

■ [1796] [Volta, Giovanni S.] Ittiolitologia Veronese del Museo Bozziano ora annesso a quellodel conte Giovambattista Gazola e di altri gabinetti di fossili Veronesi. Verona: StamperiaGiuliari, 1796.

Elephant folio. 323pp + 76 plates (including 19 folding double-page orlarger plates), with a total of 152 figures. Small stamp of Léon Vaillanton title-page. Contemporary paper over boards, small tear alongbottom of the front joint. A little internal spotting, otherwise a fine,untrimmed and wide-margined copy, with plates in exceptionalcondition.

First edition of a fine work which rightfully earned the reputation as thegreatest eighteenth-century work on fossil fish. This “splendidly illustratedmonograph” (Zittell, p.132) is a record of fossils first discovered on Monte Bolca,near Verona, which were then [1796] in the private natural history museum ofCount Gazola. However, when the French conquered Verona in 1797, Napoleonhad the collection sent to the Paris Museum. In 1803, Count Gazola went toParis and petitioned Napoleon to allow the fossils to return. Today most of thisimpressive collection is the centerpiece of the Municipal Museum of NaturalHistory in Verona. The story of these famous fossils, and of Volta’s magnificentfolio, is told in detail in Frigo and Sorbini, 600 fossili per Napoleone (Verona,

1997). Murray, II, p.237 (“75 plates”). Nissen ZBI, 4289. Ward & Carozzi, 2260 (describing acopy with only 11 plates). Léon Vaillant (1834-1914), a French zoologist who specialized inichthyology, wrote the Poissons volume for many of the scientific expeditions of his day as well asEtudes sur les poissons (1883, with Firmin Bocourt).

Color Plates of Cornish Rocks

■ [1797] Rashleigh, Philip. Specimens of British Minerals. London: Bulmer, 1797-1802.

4to. Parts [Vol.] I and II bound together as usual. 56pp + 33 aquatint plates;23, [1]p + 21 aquatint plates. Complete with all 54 colored plates, mostly hand-colored. Later half calf over marbled boards. Gift inscription from Rashleigh’sgreat nephew Jonathan (then owner of the collection) to his wife Jane, atManabilly [the Rashleigh estate], Aug. 20, 1877. Bookseller’s label of Wheldon& Wesley on front paste-down. An exceptionally fine copy with original brightcoloring.

First editions. Classic mineral book, based on Rashleigh’s own impressive collection. Many of theplates are by the landscape watercolorist T.R. Underwood, friend of the Romantic poets (Coleridgecalled him “Subligno”). “These volumes with their hand-colored engravings, stand with the worksof James Sowerby as the finest English colored mineralogies produced in their day. Few collectionscan boast so many scientifically important specimens” (Robert W. Jones, “Philip Rashleigh and hisSpecimens of British Minerals,” in The Mineralogical Review, 26:4, pp. 77-84). Murray, II, p.120.Ward & Carozzi, 1833. Wilson, The History of Mineral Collecting, pp.71-74, 221.


80

■ [1798] Karsten, Dietrick Ludwig Gustav. A Description of the Minerals in the LeskeanMuseum. Translated by George Mitchell. Dublin: Mercier, 1798.

8vo. Two volumes bound as one. 369; 374-667 + errata leaf. Original cloth andboards; some creasing on backstrip, with paper title label. Noted in manuscripton cover: “Signet Library” with former library shelf label on inside front cover.A fine, untrimmed copy.

First edition in English; an earlier edition was published in Leipzigin 1789. “The Leske collection of minerals had belonged to AbrahamWerner, and upon his death came into possession of N. C. Leske(1757-1786), professor of Leipzig and Marburg; it was purchasedupon the recommendation of Richard Kirwan (1733-1812) with agrant from the Irish Parliament in 1792 and by members of theDublin Society, who founded a natural history museum in the sameyear in which the collection was placed; the collection is now in theNational Museum of Ireland in Dublin” (Sinkankas 3325). Of thecollection itself, Sinkankas stated “At the time, the Leske Collection of7,331 specimens was one of the largest and most important in Europe.It occupied a unique position among such collections because ofhaving been studied by [Richard] Kirwan and used as the basis for hislandmark Elements of Mineralogy.” Volume I of this 1798 editioncontains the “Characteristic and Systematic Collections”; Vol. II, “Geological, Geographical, andEconomical Collections.” Murray, I, p.325. Sinkankas 3326, citing the Dublin ed. Wilson, TheHistory of Mineral Collecting, p.217 (erroneously citing “London”).

■ [1799] Townson, Robert. Tracts and Observations in Natural History and Philosophy.London: Printed for the Author, 1799.

8vo. ix, 232pp + seven plates, including folding frontispiece. Some browningon plates. Untrimmed and unopened copy in original cloth and boards, somechipping on spine, otherwise fine.

First edition. A miscellany of “tracts” by thisEdinburgh scientist, starting with essays on theanatomy of various reptiles and amphibians (e.g.,turtles), with some nicely detailed plates, then movingthrough a number of odd topics—“On the Cause ofObjects appearing Single, though viewed with bothEyes,” “On the final cause of our Aversion to tread onsoft Bodies”—and concluding with eight articles onmineralogy. BM Nat. History V, p.2130. Ward &Carozzi list Townson’s 1798 Philosophy of Mineralogy(2196). Not listed by Nissen even though six of theengraved plates are highly zoological.


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■ [1801] Reuss, J.D. Repertorium Commentationum a societatibus litterariis editarum.Gottingen: Dieterich, 1801-1821.

Sixteen volumes in 12, 8vos, all bound in uniform half red morocco over clothboards, decorative gilt-stamped spine, with small Athenaeum [Club of London]symbol stamped on the last spine panel. Small ink stamp “Sold by order/of thecommittee” on each inside blank flyleaf, the only other marking. Expectedrubbing and wear on corners and joints, but a clean and tight set.

The rare original printing of a “classified subject index to the contents of learned society journalsto the end of the 18th century” (Garrison-Morton, 6750, noting, “Vols. 10-16 deal with medicineand surgery”). “A complete and admirably digested catalogue of all the papers contained in thevarious scientific and literary journals, academical transactions, etc., both British and foreign”(Sabin 70154). The arrangement of this set is: I, General Natural History and Zoology; II, Botanyand Mineralogy; III, Chemistry and Metallurgy; IV, Physics; V, Astronomy; VI, Agriculture; VII,Technology (e.g., hydrostatics, hydrology, civil engineering); VIII, History; IX, Philology (e.g.,poetry, language, music); X-XVI, Medicine, including pharmacy and surgery. Each volume withits individual author index. This set was reprinted by Burt Franklin (NY) in 1961—and thatreprint is now scarce. Brunet IV, 1255-56.

■ [1801] Marcellini, Silvestro. Trattato Compendioso Orittologico.Camerino: Torchi Goriani, 1801.

8vo. 278, [2]pp + one engraved plate of chemical signs. Smallbookseller’s ticket [Il Polifilo, Milano] on front paste-down.Contemporary boards, rubbed. Name excised from bottom of thetitle-page, otherwise a fine copy.

First edition. A treatise on the nature of fossils and minerals and of theirchemical composition, based upon specimens in Marcellini’s own “museo.”In fact, Marcellini tells us that this “Trattato,”is a “succinct narrative of thethings that exist in the Museum.” In the Preface, Marcellini writes about thebeginnings of his collection and how the collecting of mineral specimensencouraged him to approach the subject in a scientific manner. He first became interested in thesubject in 1785 with the opening of a pyrite mine located in an area between the Giano andSentino Rivers, near Fabriano (in the Marches). Here were discovered a wide variety of fossils andminerals. Although certainly concerned with mining, the Hoover Collection did not own a copy.Ward & Carozzi, 1496.

■ [1803] Camper, Pierre. Oeuvres de Pierre Camper, qui ont pour object l’histoire naturelle, laphysiologie et l’anatomie comparée. Paris: Jansen, 1803.

8vo. Three volumes. [104], 391; 502 + errata; 501pp + errata. With the separatefolio Atlas of 34 engraved plates. Contemporary dark blue calf over marbledboards—text and Atlas bindings match—some expected scuffing on spines.Old stain on the edge of the first seven leaves of the Atlas as well as somescattered foxing, otherwise very good.

First edition thus, with the text and plates mostly focused on Camper’s important work incomparative anatomy. Camper (1722-1789) was a Dutch anatomist and naturalist who held anumber of academic posts in the Netherlands and Germany. While Camper’s works, “mainlymemoirs and detached papers… are very numerous” the Encyclopedia Britannica (11th ed.) noted,


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“the most important of those bearing on comparative anatomy were published in three volumes inParis in 1803.” Garrison-Morton called Camper “an artist of skill [who] made his mark as ananthropologist and craniologist” (77), and elsewhere called this Dutch scientist “one of the greatestanatomical artists” (3580). Volume 1 opens with a life of Camper and then presents his variouswritings on the anatomy of the orang-outang, the two-horned rhinoceros, deer antlers, andconcludes with a section on the fossils discovered at St. Pierre Mountain (near Maestricht), with acorresponding plate in the Atlas. As Camper demonstrated throughout his research, comparativeanatomy was crucial to the understanding and identification of vertebrate fossils. The other volumeshave a corresponding number of unusual papers—all illustrated in the Atlas—such as an explicitlyillustrated survey of the male elephant. All of the plates were engraved from Camper’s drawings. BMNat. History I, p.305. Dictionary of Scientific Biography II, pp.37-38. Nissen ZBI, 796.

■ [1806] Linné, Carl von. A General System of Nature, through the three grand kingdoms ofanimals, vegetables, and minerals. London: Lackington, Allen, 1806.

Seven volumes, 8vos. vii, 943 + errata; 717 + 2pp errata; 784; 727; 888; 891-1851, [29]; 352, 42, vi, [16]pp. Engraved portraits + nine engraved plates.Bound in uniform three-quarter leather over contemporary marbled boards,recent uniform rebacking. Fine set.

Reprinted in part from the publisher’s 1802-04 issue (although some type reset) which was basedon the 1788-93 edition of Linnaeus’s work. Volumes I-IV are devoted to the Animal Kingdom (V.I, mammals, birds, amphibians, fish; Vols. II-III, insects; Vol. IV; worms); the Vegetable Kingdomin two volumes (Vols. V, VI), and the Mineral Kingdom in one (Vol. VII) with a life of Linné anda dictionary. British Museum, Catalogue of the Works of Linnaeus, 138.

■ [1806] Smith, Reverend Thomas. The Naturalist’s Cabinet: Containing Interesting Sketches ofAnimal History; Illustrative of the Natures, Dispositions, Manners, and Habits of all the MostRemarkable Quadrupeds, Birds, Fishes, Amphibia, Reptiles, etc. in the Known World. London: JamesCundee, 1806-1807.

Six volumes, 8vos. With 60 engraved plates,including extra engraved titles. Small name plateof Anne Moens on Vol. 1. Contemporarypolished tree calf with decorative gilt-stampedspines and volume and title spine labels,expected scuffing otherwise a fine, clean set.

First edition. Jahn states that the special genre of the“humble admirers of Natural History”—he includesCharles Leigh’s Natural History in this group—“culminated in the nineteenth century in such Plinyesquewritings as Rev. Thomas Smith’s The Naturalist’s Cabinet”(The Lying Stones, p.181). The Rev. Smith informs thepolite reader that the pages of this work “are unsullied by a single sentence which might excite ablush, or contaminate, even in the slightest degree, the purest and most delicate mind.” Most ofthe detailed illustrations show the subject in a natural setting (e.g., shark attacking a sailor), andsome slightly fanciful views (e.g., man boxing a kangaroo; an orang-otang dining with a couple).BM Nat. History p.1208 (cataloging a set lacking two volumes). Nissen ZBI, 3882. Wood (p.571)catalogued the six-volume Paris edition of 1810.


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■ [1808] Parkinson, James. Organic Remains of a Former World. An Examination of theMineralized Remains of the Vegetables and Animals of the Antediluvian world; generally termedExtraneous Fossils. Three volumes. London: Sherwood, Neely and Jones, 1808-1811.

Three volumes, 4to. With three frontispieces and 51 colored plates of fossils.Contemporary full tree calf with decorative spines. Herbert McLean Evansbookplate on paste-down of Vol. I; armorial bookplate of Richard Howardon all three paste-downs. A mixed set: Vol. I, first published in 1804, is asecond printing; Vol. II, 1808, and Vol. III, 1811, are both first printings.Contemporary full polished tree calf with green and black spine labels, gilt-stamped spines. Lower front joint of Vol I tender, otherwise a fine set.

First and second printings. One of the foundation works of scientific paleontologyin Great Britain. In 1850 geologist Gideon A. Mantell commented that thepublication of this work “must be regarded as a memorable event in the history ofBritish Paleontology; it was the first attempt to give a familiar and scientific accountof the fossil relics of animals and plants, accompanied by figures of the specimensdescribed (A Pictorial Atlas of Fossil Remains, p.13). In this series, Parkinson revealsthat he had read all of the major and minor works in the field. Volume I includes a“sketch of the history of the science” of oryctology in which he discusses the literature of thefield—with his longest comments reserved for Beringer’s Lithographiae Wircebergensis. Throughoutthe three volumes, Parkinson refers to, and quotes from, the works of many authors. “The firstvolume, on plant fossils, contained Parkinson’s theory of the vegetable origin of bituminousproducts; the second and third volumes discussed the animal kingdom. In the third volume,Parkinson introduced the theories of William Smith, Lamarck, and Cuvier to the general Britishreading public, adopting Smith’s method of using fossils as stratigraphic markers, and drawingupon Lamarck’s knowledge of shells and Cuvier’s knowledge of the amphibia and land mammals”(Norman Library 1641). According to Zittel, Parkinson selected the epistolary style for presentinghis work because it was “the most easy of comprehension, and the most likely to stimulatepopular interest in fossils” (p.127). Parkinson is best remembered for first fully describingparalysis tremens, now known as “Parkinson’s disease.” Nissen ZBI, 3091. Purchased from Zeitlin& Ver Brugge.

■ [1809] Martin, William. Outlines of an attempt to establish a knowledge of extraneousfossils on scientific principles. Macclesfield: Wilson, 1809.

8vo. [4], xviii, x, [2], 250, [1] advt, [4]pp Addenda and Emendanda. Recent brownmorocco and marbled boards, new end-papers; slight foxing otherwise a fine copy.

First edition of a work by this chiefly self-taught naturalist who was elected a fellow of theLinnean Society in 1796. Ward & Carozzi, 1512.

■ [1812] Thomson, Thomas. History of the Royal Society, from its institutions to the end ofthe eighteenth century. London: R. Baldwin, 1812.

4to. viii, 552, [91] Appendix & Index, [1]p. Recent new leather spine and spinelabel over contemporary cloth boards, new end-papers.

First edition. History of the Society, arranged by subject—Natural History (includingMineralogy), Mathematics, Mechanical Philosophy, Chemistry, and “Miscellaneous Articles.” Thelengthy Appendix includes the Society’s charter, list of members, and “Minutes of the RoyalSociety respecting Newton.”


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■ [1816] Kendall, Francis. A descriptive catalogue of the minerals and fossil organicremains of Scarborough and the vicinity, including the line of coast from Hornsea toMulgrave, and extending into the interior as far as Malton. Scarborough: Coultas, 1816.

8vo. 316pp + errata + six plates (four hand-colored, one folding). With anextra engraved title-page with a hand-colored vignette. Armorial bookplate ofR.M. Beverly on front paste-down; signatures of Frances E.B. Stephens (1834)on flyleaves. Contemporary half calf and marbled boards, decorative spine.Very nice copy.

First edition. Excellent catalogue of fossils discovered within a specific geographic area.Arranged in five sections: minerals, fossil conchology, fossil zoophytes, fossil vegetableremains, and fossil bones. Includes a six-page list of subscribers. Listed neither bySinkankas nor by Wilson in his “Bibliography of Collection Catalogues” (although it isapparent that this work is based on Kendall’s collection). Ward & Carozzi, 1250.

■ [1816] Thoresby, Ralph. Ducatus Leodiensis: Or, The topography of the ancient and populoustowns and parish of Leedes, and parts adjacent, in the West-Riding of the county of York… extractedfrom records, original evidences, and manuscripts. Leeds: Printed by B. Dewhirst, 1816.

Second edition, with notes and additions. Double folio. [6], xvii, xvii, 261 (i.e.268), 123, 159 + plates.

WITH:

Whitaker, Thomas Durham. Loidis and Elmete; Or, An attempt to illustrate the districtsdescribed in those words by Bede… Leeds: Printed by T. Davidson, 1820.

Double folio. [6], 404, 80 (i.e. 88). Elaborately bound in red morocco withheavy decorative gilt stamping on covers and spines.

Two volumes, compiling “what is commonly called the ‘History of Leeds’” (Boyle), complete withall plates (64 engraved plates), vignettes, etc. The Thoresby volume includes MusaeumThoresbyanum: Or, A catalogue of the antiquities and of the natural and artificial rarities preserved inthe repository of Ralph Thoresby, a new edition of this rare 1713 catalogue, with extensive notes and

additions by Whitaker (separatetitle-page and pagination, 150pp,illus.) Murray, III, p.211.Wilson, The History of MineralCollecting, p.225, citing the 1713edition.


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■ [1820] Buckland, Rev. William. Vindiciae Geologicae: the connexion of geology with religion,explained in an inaugural lecture delivered before University of Oxford, May 15, 1819, on theendowment of readership in geology. Oxford: University Press for the Author, 1820.

4to. [5], 38pp. Very light marginal damp stain on last two leaves. Untrimmedcopy in recent plain wrappers, otherwise very good.

First edition. “This address created a sensation, dealing as it did most judiciously with the [fossil]discoveries which then excited some alarm” (DNB). The last four pages are an Appendix“containing a brief Summary of the proof, by geology of the Mosaic Deluge.” Noted as one of thelast scientific defenses of the Great Flood. But, as Faul & Faul notes, although Buckland “was thelast great diluvialist…, the label does not do him justice. He was an excellent field observer and aperspicacious interpreter of geological data with an unusually broad grasp of geologicalrelationships” (Faul & Faul p.120). Ward & Carozzi, 367.

■ [1822] Buckland, Reverend William. Account of an assemblage of fossilteeth and bones of elephant, hippopotamus, bear, tiger, and hyaena, andsixteen other animals: discovered in a case at Kirkdale, Yorkshire, in the year 1821:with a comparative view of five similar caverns in various parts of England and otherson the continent. London: Nicol, 1822.

4to. 68pp + 12 lithographed plates (numbered XV-XXVI).Contemporary full polished calf with recent rebacking; a very good copy.

First separate printing of Buckland’s illustrated paper—first printed in thePhilosophical Transactions—on the discovery of a large cache of bones discoveredin a Yorkshire cave. The engraved plates include a map of the region, a plate witha diagram of the cavern as well as an illustration of the entrance, nine fineengraved plates of teeth and bones, and an illustrated cut-away view of the cave’s various chambers(keyed to the text) with ten visitors (including one woman) poking about.

■ [1822] Parkinson, James. Outlines of Oryctology. An introduction to the study of fossilorganic remains; especially of those found in the British strata: intended to aid the student in hisinquiries respecting the nature of fossils, and their connections with the formation of the earth. London:Printed for the Author, 1822.

vii, [1] errata, 346, [3] + [1]p advt + 10 plates. Armorial bookplate of FrancisLunn on front paste-down, with a neatly penned “Contents” on the facing leaf.Untrimmed copy in contemporary half calf and marbled boards. Very nicecopy.

First edition. Excellent one-volume handbook following up on Parkinson’s longer, multi-yearproduction. As Parkinson notes, most of the fossil remains discovered are “of bivalves orunivalves,” not as were later encountered, of mammals and large reptiles. Parkinson tried tostraddle the Biblical interpretation of the earth’s development with the geological one. When thestudent of fossils realizes that vast changes had occurred on the planet, Parkinson thought, he mayfind certain theological constraints a challenge. “Circumstances will be observed,” Parkinsonadmits, “apparently contradictory to the Mosaic account, but which, it is presumed, serve toestablish it [e.g., fossils] as the revealed history of creation.” Parkinson had not adopted Mr.Edward’s prosaic “fossilogy,” but adhered to the more accepted word then in use for the study offossils—Oryctology. Ward & Carozzi, 1736.


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■ [1823] Brongniart, Alexandre. Mémoire sur les terrains de sédiment superieurs calcaréo-trappéen du Vicentin… Paris: Levrault, 1823.

4to. [4], iv, [2], 86pp + six lithographed plates. Signature excised from the frontflyleaf. Contemporary cloth and marbled boards. Fine copy.

First edition. Brongniart was an eminent French mineralogist (1770-1847) who wrote a numberof books, including ones (as here) on fossil shells, but he is best remembered for his associationwith Georges Cuvier and their mutual work on stratigraphy [see 1835]. Five of the handsomeplates depict a variety of shells. Ward & Carozzi, 336, calling attention to the book’s“bibliographical footnotes.”

■ [1823] Buckland, Reverend William. Reliquiae Diluvianae: Or,Observations on the Organic Remains Contained in Caves, Fissures and DiluvialGravel, and on other Geological Phenomena, Attesting the Action of an UniversalDeluge. London: John Murray, 1823.

4to. vii, [1], 303pp + one folding table + 27 plates (including onefolding map, one folding color plate, and two colored maps). Recentperiod leather rebacking with original silk-covered boards.

First edition thus. Vastly expanded from his 1822 paper printed in thePhilosophical Transactions [see 1822], this is Buckland’s famous treatise thatsought to prove that the recently-discovered remains of rhinoceros, mammoth,stag, bison and other animals were direct evidence of the Deluge. “Dr.Buckland was henceforward the acknowledged authority on bone caves andtheir contents, and to his disbelief in all contemporaneous existence of manwith the cave animals may be traced much of the incredulity with which all evidence of early manin Britain was received for more than a generation” (Dr. A.C. Haddon). Nissen ZBI, 652. Ward& Carozzi, 369 (reproducing the title-page on p.133). Plates 1-13 are engraved plates (and 1-11are identical with the plates in Buckland’s 1822 work); plates 14-25 are lithographs, and the hand-colored maps are steel engravings. The folding table shows “the principal Localities of theAntediluvian Animals mentioned in this Work.”

■ [1823] Deleuze, J.P.F. Histoire et description du Muséum royal d’histoire naturelle. Paris:Royer, 1823.

8vo. vi, 720pp + three folding plates + 14 engraved plates.Contemporary polished tree calf with decorative gilt-stamping on covers and spine; leather spine label; marblededges. Some scattered foxing otherwise very good.

First edition. Descriptive catalogue of various collections of the FrenchRoyal Museum of Natural History, with three plates depicting thelayout of the grounds and other plates of Museum’s various buildings.The Museum was first established in 1635 as part of the Jardin du Roiby Louis XIII. It functioned as the King’s “Cabinet of naturalcuriosities.” “By a decree of the revolutionary National Convention in1793, the Jardin du Roi became the Jardin des Plantes, and the Cabinetdu Roi… became the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle” (Faul & Faul p.137).


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■ [1824] Buckland, Reverend William. Reliquiae Diluvianae: Or, Observations on the OrganicRemains Contained in Caves, Fissures and Diluvial Gravel, and on other Geological Phenomena,Attesting the Action of an Universal Deluge. London: Murray, 1824.

4to. vii, [1], 303pp + one folding table + 27 lithographed plates (including onefolding color plate and two colored maps) + folding table. Red-leather gilt-stamped armorial bookplates of York solicitor and book collector EdwardHailstone on the front paste-down and armorial bookplate of Francis GraySmart on the facing end-paper. Contemporary full diced calf with decorativespine (gilt- and blind-stamped) with leather spine label. A fine copy.

Second edition—just a few typographic errors corrected, otherwise identical text and plates(although the “Explanation of the Plates” text is bound interleaved between the plates) and thefolding table is placed at the end of the book. Ward & Carozzi, 370.

A Paleobotanical Classic

■ [1825] Artis, Edmund Tyrell. Antedilivian Phytology, Illustrated by aCollection of Fossil Remains on Plants, Peculiar to the Coal Formations of GreatBritain… London: Printed for the Author, 1825.

4to. xiii, 24pp + 24 lithographed plates (one folding), each plateaccompanied by one page (leaf ) of letterpress. Armorial bookplate ofHolland House on the front paste-down. Original boards, spine chipped,front joint starting, paper spine label very rubbed. Slight foxing on edgeof some plates, otherwise a fine copy.

First edition. “The earliest English work devoted exclusively to fossil plants” (L.F.Ward, Geographical Distribution of Fossil Plants). The exquisitely engraved fossilplants depicted here were “selected for their novelty and interest, from upwards ofa thousand specimens now in the possession of the author, and systematically described, with theview of facilitating the study of this important branch” (from the sub-title added to the 1838edition). Nissen ZBI, 51.

■ [1835] Cuvier, Georges and Alexandre Brongniart. DescriptionGéologique des Environs de Paris. Paris: d’Ocagne, 1835.

8vo. 685pp + separate 4to Atlas of 18 plates (some folding,including two maps). Small name stamp, “AlphonseJeannet/Neuchâtel” on front paste-down; another signatureexcised. Untrimmed copy in the publisher’s original printedboards (matching set); expected shelf rubbing otherwise fine.

Third edition. Scarce edition in the original printed boards (uncommonthus in the trade), of this important paleontological text. Geikie stated

that Cuvier and Brongniart “established on a basis of accurate observation the principles ofpaleontological stratigraphy, demonstrated the use of fossils for the determination of geologicalchronology, and paved the way for the enormous advance which have since been made in thisdepartment of science.” For their “distinguished labors” in writing this book, the pair “deserve anhonored place among the founders of geology” (The Founders of Geology, p.372). Ward & Carozzi,565, citing only the 1822 (2nd) ed. For the Swiss geologist Aphonse Jeannet (1883-1962), seeGeorges Dubois, Naturalistes Neuchâtelois du XXe siècle (1976) pp.106-7.


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■ [1838] Artis, Edmund Tyrell. Antediluvian Phytology, Illustrated by a Collection of FossilRemains on Plants, Peculiar to the Coal Formations of Great Britain… London: Printed for theAuthor, by J. Nichols and Son, 1838.

4to. xiii, 24pp + 25 plates (one folding; two different Plate IIIs). Originalpatterned cloth; a very good, untrimmed copy.

Second edition [printing]. With the exception of a new title-page and an additional Plate III, allthe text and plates are identical with the first 1825 printing. Mantell, citing this edition but notthe first of 1825, declared “the plates are well executed, and faithfully portray the originalspecimens.” Ward & Carozzi, 79 (citing only this ed.)

■ [1848] Agassiz, Louis. Bibliographia Zoologiae et Geologiae. London: The Ray Society,1848-1854.

Four volumes. 8vos. xxiii, 506; 492; 657; 604, 3, 18pp. Original bluecloth, spines slight sunned and with light expected shelf wear. Largely anunopened set.

First edition. “A classic alphabetically arranged author catalogue which may be regarded as theforerunner of the Catalogue of Scientific Papers published by the Royal Society. It should find aplace in every reference library on natural history” (Wood, p.182).

■ [1850] Mantell, Gideon Algernon. A Pictorial Atlas of Fossil Remains, consisting of colouredillustrations selected from Parkinson’s “Organic remains of a former world” and Artis’s “Antediluvianphytology.” London: Bohn, 1850.

4to. 207pp + colored frontispiece + 74 colored plates (some folding). Giftinscription on free front end-paper from 1851. Bright copy in publisher’soriginal cloth, repair made to rear hinge, otherwise fine.

First edition. Fine collection of plates assembled from two important British books [both presentin the Jahn collection] by the eminent British geologist and paleontologist. “Best known for hisdiscovery of the first dinosaur ever to be described properly—a momentous event” (DSB), Mantell(1790-1852) was the second recipient of the Geological Society of London’s Wollaston Medal.This Atlas, dedicated to the Rev. William Buckland, is dividedinto two sections: Fossil flora (Plates 1-33) and fossil fauna(Plates 34-74). Each plate is accompanied by a page ofdescriptive text. In this work, Mantell was assisted by JohnMorris, author of A Catalogue of British Fossils. Mantell trustedthat this volume will “not only prove interesting to the generalreader, as a beautiful Pictorial Atlas of some of the mostremarkable relics of the animals and plants of a ‘FormerWorld,’ but also constitute a valuable book of reference in thelibrary of the Geologist and Paleontologist, since it contains thenames and localities of no inconsiderable number of speciesand genera.” Dictionary of Scientific Biography IX, pp.86-88.Nissen ZBI, 2683. Ward & Carozzi, p.1490.


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Jahn Collection Author Index [with values]

Note: Publication dates are in bold, with catalogue entries arranged chronologically.

Approximate individual values are noted in brackets.

Agassiz, Louis. Bibliographia Zoologiae et Geologiae. 1848-1854. [500]

Agricola, Giorgius. De la generatione de le cose, 1550. [5000]

Aldrovandi, Ulisse. Opera Omnia 1599-1667. [85,000]

Artis, Edmund Tyrell. Antedilivian Phytology, 1825. [500]

Artis, Edmund Tyrell. Antediluvian Phytology, 1838. [650]

Baier, Johann. Oryktographia Norica, 1708. [3500]

Barba, Alvaro Alonso et al. A Collection of Scarce and Valuable Treatises…, 1739. [1500]

Bartholin, Thomas. De Unicornu Observationes Novae, 1678. [2000]

Bauhin, Johann. Historia novi et admirabilis fontis, 1598. [9000]

Behrens, Georg Henning. The natural history of Hartz-Forest, 1730. [850]

Bél, Martin. Hungariae Antiquae et Novae Prodromus, 1723. [2000]

Beringer, Johann Bartholomew Adam. Lithographiae Wirceburgenis, 1726. [10,500]

Beringer, Johann Bartholomew Adam. Lithographiae Wirceburgenis, 1767. [5500]

Bertrand, E. Dictionnaire universel des fossiles propres et des fossiles accidentels., 1763. [500]

Boccone, Paulis. Recherches et Observations naturelles, 1674. [2000]

Boehmer, George Rudolph. Bibliotheca Scriptorum Historiae Naturalis, 1785-1789. [2000]

Boodt, Anselmus de. Gemmarum et lapidum historia, 1609. [9000]



Born, Ignaz Edler von. Index rerum naturalium Musei Caesarei Vindobonensis, 1778. [2500]

Bourguet, Louis. Traité des Petrifications, 1742. [2500]

Breyn, Johann Philipp. Epistola de Melonibus Petrefactis Montis Carmel, 1722. [1000]

Brongniart, Alexandre. Mémoire sur les terrains de sédiment superieurs calcaréo-trappéen du Vicentin,1823. [500]

Buckland, Reverend William. Vindiciae Geologicae. 1820. [1000]

Buckland, Reverend William. Account of an assemblage of fossil teeth… 1822. [500]


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Buckland, Reverend William. Reliquiae Diluvianae, 1823. [750]

Buckland, Reverend William. Reliquiae Diluvianae, 1824. [750]

Buonanni, Filippo et al. Rerum Naturalium Historia… in Museo Kircheriano, 1773-82. [8500]

Burnet, Thomas. The Theory of the Earth, 1691. [2000]

Burnet, Thomas. The Theory of the Earth… The Last Two Books, 1690. [see above]

Burnet, Thomas. A Review of the Theory of the Earth, and of its Proofs, 1690. [see above]

Burnet, Thomas. An Answer to the Late Exceptions made by Mr. Erasmus Warrenn, 1690. [???]

Burnet, Thomas. Archaeologiae Philosophicae, 1692. [see above]

Burtin, Francois-Xavier de. Oryctographie de Bruxelles, 1784. [5500]

Büttner, Daniel S. Rudera Diluvii Testes, 1710. [3000]

Camper, Pierre. Oeuvres de Pierre Camper, 1803. [2000]

Celius, George Henry. Cataclysmus Thuringiacus, 1690. [200]

Ciampini, Giovanni. De Incombustibili Lino, 1691. [See Baier]

Croll, Oswald, La Royalle Chymie, 1624. [2000]

Cuvier, Georges. Description Géologique des Environs de Paris, 1835. [2000]

De Laet, Johann. De Gemmis et Lapidibus Libri Duo, 1647. [see Boodt, 1647]

Deleuze, J.P.F. Histoire et description du Muséum royal d’histoire naturelle, 1823. [450]

Derham, W. Physico-Theology, 1727. [350]

Dezallier d’Argenville, A.-J. L’Historie Naturelle Éclaircie, 1755. [2000]

Dodwell, Henry. De Parma Equestri Woodwardiana Dissertatio, 1713. [1250]

Edwards, George. Elements of Fossilogy, 1776. [1000]

Einckel, Casper F. Museographia, 1727. [3000]

Ellis, John. An essay towards a natural history of the corallines, 1755. [3000]

Ellis, John. Essai sur l’histoire naturelle des corallines, 1756. [750]

Ehrhart, Balthasar. De Belemnitis Suevicis, 1724. [450]

della Fratta et Montalbano, M. Dell’Acque Minerali del Regno D’Vngheria, 1687. [see Baier]

Geier, Johann Daniel. Schediasma, de Montibus Conchiferis, 1687. [750]

Geissler, Elias. Disputatio Historico-Physica de Amphibiis, 1676. [350]

Geoffroy, Etienne-Francois. A treatise on the fossil… 1736. [1000]

Gersaint, Edmé François. Catalogue raisonné d’une collection en touts genres de Mr. Bonnier de laMosson, 1744. [1750]

Gimma, D. Giacinto. Della Storia Naturale delle Gemme, 1730. [2000]


91

Grew, Nehemiah. Musaeum Regalis Societatis, 1681. [1500]

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Hartmann, Philipp Jacob. Succincta Succini Prussica historia et demonstratio, 1699. [350]

Hebenstreit, Johann Ernst. Museum Richterianum, 1743. [55,000]

Helwing, Georg Andreas. Lithographia Angerburgica, 1717. [1250]

Henckel, Johann F. Idea Generalis de Lapidum Origine, 1734. [950]

Heusinger, Johann Michael. Dissertatio de noctiluca mercuriali, 1716. [see Baier]

Hill, John. A Review of the Works of the Royal Society of London, 1751. [500]

Hill, John. Theophrastus’s History of Stones, 1774. [1500]

Jacobaeus, Oliger. Muséum Regium, 1696. [3000]

Jonston, Johann. Thaumatographia Naturalis, 1632. [2500]

Jonston, Johann. Thaumatographia Naturalis, 1633. [1250]

Karsten, Dietrick L. A Description of the Minerals in the Leskean Museum, 1798. [2500]

Kendall, Francis. A descriptive catalogue of the minerals and fossil organic remains of Scarboroughand the vicinity, 1816. [1250]

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Klein, Jacob Theodor. Mantissa ichtyologica, 1746. [See Scheuchzer, Piscium]

Klein Jacob Theodor. Tentamen Methodi Ostracologicae, 1753. [1250]

Klinchamerus, Christian. De Natura Mineralium Exercitationes quinque, 1662. [see Geier]

Kundmann, Johann Christian. Promptuarium rerum naturalium et artificialium Vratislaviensepraecipue, 1726. [1250]

Lachmund, Friderich. Oryctographia Hildesheimensis, 1669. [2000]

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Lange, Carl Nicolaus. Methodus Nova et Facilis Testacea Marina Pleraque, 1722. [see above]

Lange, Carl Nicolaus. Tractatus de Origine Lapidum Figuratorum, 1709. [see above]

Legati, Lorenzo. Museo Cospiano annesso a quello del famoso Ulisse Aldrovandi, 1677. [5000]

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Lesser, Friedrich Christian. Lithotheologie, 1735. [2500]

Leupold, Jacob. Prodromus bibliothecae Metallicae, 1732. [2000]

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Lhwyd, Edward. Lithophylacii Britannici Ichnographia, 1699. [9500]


92

Lhwyd, Edward. Lithophylacii Britannici Ichnographia, 1760. [1500]

Liebknecht, Johann Georg. Hassiae subterraneae specimen, 1730. [1500]

Linck, Johann Heinrich. De Stellis Marinis liber singularis, 1733. [4000]

Linné, Carl von. A General System of Nature, 1806. [650]

Linné, Carl von. Museum S:ae R:ae M:tis Ludovicae Ulricae reginae Suecorum, 1764. [1500]

Lister, Martin. Conchyliorum bivalvium…, 1696. [9500]

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Pliny, the Elder. Historiae naturalis, 1778. [350]


93

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Ray, John. Three Physico-Theological Discourses, 1721. [150]

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Royal Society of Paris. The Philosophical History and Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Sciences atParis, 1742. [2500]

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Sachs, Philip Jacob. Gammarologia, sive Gammororum, 1665. [3000]

Scaliger, Julius Caesar. Exotericarum Exercitationum Liber XV, 1612. [650]

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Scheuchzer, Johann Jacob. Herbarium Diluvianum, 1723. [1750]

Scheuchzer, Johann Jacob. Homo Diluvii Testis., 1726. [3000]

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Scheuchzer, Johann Jacob. Piscium Querelae et Vindiciae Expositae, 1708. [4000]

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94

Schreber, Johann C.D. Lithographia Halensis, 1758. [650]

Schuette, Johann Heinrich. Oryctographia Jenensis, 1761. [350]

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Smith, Reverend Thomas. The Naturalist’s Cabinet, 1806. [350]

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Whitaker, Thomas Durham. Loidis and Elmete, 1820. [see Thoresby]


95

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Wolfart, Petrius. Historiae Naturalis Hassiae Inferioris, 1719. [3000]

Woodward, John. An Essay toward a Natural History of the Earth, 1695. [1500]

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96

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