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147 woodcut diagrams in the text. 6 p.l., 196 leaves. Small folio (272 x 190 mm.), cont. Parisian binding of light brown calf (very skillful restorations to the binding), panelled in blind with gilt fleurons in the corners, gilt floral tool in the center of each cover of a hand holding flowers, small gilt stars in the six compartments of spine. Nuremberg: J. Petreius, 1543. First edition, and a very fine and crisp copy, of "the earliest of the three books of science that most clarified the relationship of man and his universe (along with Newton's Principia and Darwin's Origin of Species)."-Dibner, Heralds of Science, 3. This work is the foundation of the heliocentric theory of the planetary system and the most important scientific text of the 16th century. This is the seventh or eighth copy I have handled over the past 39 years. How does it compare to the others? Quite nicely. First of all, this is one of the largest copies extant; simply, this copy is really big. Also, I have had only one other copy in a 16th-century binding (Census I.245). Our binding, while carefully and skillfully repaired, is a very beautiful contemporary Parisian example; the tool of a hand holding flowers in the center of each cover is very similar to the one used on many of Marcus Fugger's plain calf bindings. It is a lovely tool in general use by the Paris binders of the period 1550-1560. The endpapers have been renewed but they are not offensive. There is a small early erasure of an ownership inscription on the title just slightly touching the "D." in the date. The first six leaves have some light dampstaining but it is pale. Provenance: At the foot of the title-page, another early signature has been thoroughly lined through. 17th- or 18th-century ownership inscription on title: "Collegii Parisiensis Societat jesu." -Bookplate of Gustavus Wynne Cook (1867-1940, amateur astronomer, collector, and benefactor of the Franklin Institute). -Franklin Institute Library bookplate. -Sold Sotheby Parke-Bernet, New York, 2 November 1977, lot 85, to the British Railway Pension Fund (a famously selective buyer). -Purchased by Pierre Berès at Sotheby's London, 21 October 1980 and sold to a prominent Spanish private collector. A very large, fresh, and crisp copy (the leaves "crackle"). Preserved in a morocco-backed box. Collation as in Horblit; some copies - about 20 per cent according to Prof. Gingerich - contain an errata leaf printed separately and later. â § Evans, Epochal Achievements in the History of Science, 15. Gingerich, An Annotated Census of Copernicus' De Revolutionibus, Madrid 7. Gingerich, Rara Astronomica, 16. Horblit 18b. Printing & the Mind of Man 70-"a landmark in human thought. It challenged the authority of antiquity and set the course for the modern world by its effective destruction of the anthropocentric view of the universe." Sparrow, Milestones of Science, 40. Zinner 1819 & p. 42.

Hardcover. Etat : Fine. Bound in attractive, contemporary Parisian calf with some discreet repairs. The boards are blind-ruled and adorned with gold-tooled ornaments. This is one of very few to have appeared on the market in a contemporary binding. The text is in excellent condition, with just minor blemishes (small early erasure of an ownership inscription on the title just slightly touching the "D." in the date. Light damp-staining to first six leaves.) Collation as in Horblit; this copy without the errata leaf -printed separately and later- that is found in a minority of copies (about 20 percent). Preserved in a morocco-backed box. Provenance: At the foot of the title-page, an early signature has been thoroughly lined through. 17th- or 18th-century inscription on title of the Jesuit College of Paris. Bookplate of Gustavus Wynne Cook (1867-1940, amateur astronomer, collector, and benefactor of the Franklin Institute). Franklin Institute bookplate. Soldat Sotheby Parke-Bernet, New York, November 1977, lot 85. Purchased by Pierre Berès at Sotheby's London, 21 October 1980 and sold to a prominent Spanish private collector. "The earliest of the three books of science that most clarified the relationship of man and his universe (along with Newton's Principia and Darwin's Origin of Species)."-Dibner, Heralds of Science, 3. This work is the foundation of the heliocentric theory of the planetary system and the most important scientific text of the 16th century. Copernicus began to work on astronomy on his own. Sometime between 1510 and 1514 he wrote an essay that has come to be known as the Commentariolus that introduced his new cosmological idea, the heliocentric system, and he sent copies to various astronomers. He continued making astronomical observations whenever he could, hampered by the poor position for observations in Frombork and his many pressing responsibilities as canon. Nevertheless, he kept working on his manuscript of On the Revolutions. In 1539 a young mathematician named Georg Joachim Rheticus (1514-1574) from the University of Wittenberg came to study with Copernicus. Rheticus brought Copernicus books in mathematics, in part to show Copernicus the quality of printing that was available in the German-speaking cities. He published an introduction to Copernicus's ideas, the Narratio prima (First Report). Most importantly, he convinced Copernicus to publish On the Revolutions. Rheticus oversaw most of the printing of the book, and on 24 May 1543 Copernicus held a copy of the finished work on his deathbed. It is impossible to date when Copernicus first began to espouse the heliocentric theory. Had he done so during his lecture in Rome, such a radical theory would have occasioned comment, but there was none, so it is likely that he adopted this theory after 1500. His first heliocentric writing was his Commentariolus. It was a small manuscript that was circulated but never printed. We do not know when he wrote this, but a professor in Cracow cataloged his books in 1514 and made reference to a "manuscript of six leaves expounding the theory of an author who asserts that the earth moves while the sun stands still" (Rosen, 1971, 343). Thus, Copernicus probably adopted the heliocentric theory sometime between 1508 and 1514. Rosen (1971, 345) suggested that Copernicus's "interest in determining planetary positions in 1512-1514 may reasonably be linked with his decisions to leave his uncle's episcopal palace in 1510 and to build his own outdoor observatory in 1513." In other words, it was the result of a period of intense concentration on cosmology that was facilitated by his leaving his uncle and the attendant focus on church politics and medicine. In the Commentariolus Copernicus listed assumptions that he believed solved the problems of ancient astronomy. He stated that the earth is only the center of gravity and center of the moon's orbit; that all the spheres encircle the sun, which is close to the center of the universe; that the universe is much larger than previously assumed, and the earth's distance to the sun is a small fraction of the size of the universe; that the apparent motion of the heavens and the sun is created by the motion of the earth; and that the apparent retrograde motion of the planets is created by the earth's motion. Although the Copernican model maintained epicycles moving along the deferent, which explained retrograde motion in the Ptolemaic model, Copernicus correctly explained that the retrograde motion of the planets was only apparent not real, and its appearance was due to the fact that the observers were not at rest in the center. The work dealt very briefly with the order of the planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, the only planets that could be observed with the naked eye), the triple motion of the earth (the daily rotation, the annual revolution of its center, and the annual revolution of its inclination) that causes the sun to seem to be in motion, the motions of the equinoxes, the revolution of the moon around the earth, and the revolution of the five planets around the sun. The Commentariolus was only intended as an introduction to Copernicus's ideas, and he wrote "the mathematical demonstrations intended for my larger work should be omitted for brevity's sake.". In a sense it was an announcement of the greater work that Copernicus had begun. The Commentariolus was never published during Copernicus's lifetime, but he sent manuscript copies to various astronomers and philosophers. He received some discouragement because the heliocentric system seemed to disagree with the Bible, but mostly he was encouraged. Although Copernicus's involvement with official attempts to reform the calendar was limited to a no longer extant letter, that endeavor made a new, serious astronomical theory welcome. Fear of the reaction of ecclesiastical authorities was probably the least of the reasons why he delayed publishing his book. The most important reasons for the delay.

No binding. Etat : Near fine. First. "THE MOST DISTINGUISHED OF ALL PRINTS OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA" [London:] Engraved by G. Vandergucht, Sep.br 1.st 1754. First state ("Skull" for "Scull" twice on sheet 3). Four sheets (ca. 29 1/2" x 23 1/2" each). Framed floating. An old transverse crease about 9" below the top edge, reinforced verso. Some small repairs to the sky. Tanning at the corners from an early mount. With good upper and lower margins throughout; sheets 1-3 trimmed to right-hand plate-mark; sheet 4 trimmed to left-hand plate-mark. Occasional very mild patches of tanning. An extraordinary set. From its founding in 1680 between the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers, Philadelphia was strategically poised to be a hub of trade. By the mid-XVIIIc it had become the major Atlantic port, fueling a golden age of growth and eminence in the arts and sciences -- the Athens of America. The Penn family had long dominated the colony, and Thomas Penn, the founder's son, commissioned a grand view of the city in 1750 to commemorate and to enhance its stature (the Penn arms at the lower left corner of the third plate underscore their dominance). George Heap undertook the project; he had been Philadelphia's coroner. The ambition of the project matched the city's stature: it was the grandest illustrated view of an American city that had ever been attempted. Nicholas Scull (perhaps an uncle by marriage) superintended the work, and Heap began advertising for subscribers (20 shillings, 10 payable in advance) and with that money set sail for England (there being no means to print it in Philadelphia) with his drawings. Heap got only as far as Delaware, and died on-board; he was buried in Philadelphia on Boxing Day 1752. Thereafter Scull shepherded the vast work through the engraving and publishing process. The Dutch engraver Gerard Vandergucht was commissioned to cut the plates, which finally emerged in June of 1754 (the King hung it in his own apartments). Wainright begins his article on the prospect by hailing it as "the most distinguished of all prints of the city of Philadelphia in terms of age, rarity, and historic importance." In 1755 the view was shrunk by about two-thirds, and placed above a plan of the city and a view of the state house and the batter, engraved by Thomas Jefferys. This is far more common; of the Heap-Scull-Vandergucht view we have located only six copies in institutional collections: the American Philosophical Society (.748:P53:1754), Haverford College, Colonial Williamsburg, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (second state), Independence National Historic Park and the New York Public Library (Stokes Collection, second state). Deák I:99 (second state). See Wainright, Nicholas B. "Scull and Heap's East Prospect of Philadelphia" in The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 73, no. 1 (January 1949) 16-25.

Hardcover. Etat : Near fine. First. THE FIRST MODERN ATLAS -- "THE MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL PTOLEMY EDITIONS" -- THE BOURNE-ROSENBACH-STREETER-WARDINGTON COPY. First edition. Strasbourg: Johann Schott, 1513. Folio ( 17 1/2" x 12 1/2", 444mm x 317mm). With 47 woodcut maps by Martin Waldseemüller, 45 double-page, 2 single (the final map printed in three colors). Bound in contemporary paneled dark calf (rebacked) over wooden boards with red silk ties. On the boards, two broad borders of emblems blind. In the central panel, fleurons with two sets of initials: "T. C." and "T. A." On the spine, seven raised bands with blind fleurons in the panels. Presented in a felt-lined clam-shell box by Brockman. Rebacked. Conserved by James and Stuart Brockman (full report available on request). Ties perished. Lacking the final blank. Small dampstain to the lower fore-corner, with some additions and repairs. Ownership signature on the title-page: "Su[m] Jo(hannis) Bourne". With scattered early ink marginalia to the text and to the plates. Bookplate of Thomas Winthrop Streeter (his sale, Parke-Bernet 25 Octover 1966, lot 6) to the front-paste down, between a lot description of the volume and the armorial bookplate of York Minster. Gilt bookplate of Lord Wardington (his sale, Sotheby's London 10 October 2006, lot 399) to the rear paste-down. Claudius Ptolemaeus was a second-century philosopher living in Roman Alexandria in Egypt. In the Greek tradition, philosophy -- the love of wisdom -- bridged what we now divide into the humanities and the sciences; he was a mathematician, natural scientist and geographer-astronomer. No manuscripts of the Geographike Hyphegesis (Geographical Guidance) survive from before the XIIIc, but some examples survive with maps that bear some relation to those Ptolemy himself drew. Various translations circulated, but Ringmann's is generally regarded as superior to his predecessors'. In the XVc, the Geographia was the core of ancient knowledge of the world. It was crucial to explorers; Columbus expected to find the East Indies because of Ptolemy's calculations and assertions about longitude. With funding from René II, Duke of Lorraine (whence the polychromy of the map of Lorraine), Walter Lud, canon in St-Dié-des-Vosges, gathered a group of humanists to knit together the new knowledge coming from Christopher Columbus and other early explorers with a new translation (Ringmann) and new maps (Waldseemüller). Together they revolutionized cartography, and were likely responsible with the coinage of America and a description of the New World. The provenance of the present copy befits the importance of the work. Sir John Bourne (ca. 1518-1575) was, until the accession of Queen Mary (1553), a rather minor parliamentary figure. Probably due to his support of Mary's claim in the succession crisis, he was knighted, given a manor and elevated to a principal secretaryship on the Privy Council. Having grown quite rich -- he was a founder of the Russia (or Muscovy) Company, perhaps the source of his geographic curiosity -- Bourne was a significant book-collector, and more than a dozen of his volumes (in Greek, Latin and Hebrew) are to be found in institutional libraries. Eight of Bourne's books remain in the collection of York Minster, most having been acquired by Toby Matthew, Archbishop of York. Doubtless our volume entered the library of the cathedral in the same way. Long afterwards, the book was bought privately by that greatest of all booksellers, A.S.W. Rosenbach, who sold it to Thomas W. Streeter, whose sale of Americana was epochal. Charles W. Traylen -- himself a force among booksellers for some eight decades -- bought the volume at that sale on behalf of Christopher Henry Beaumont Pease, Lord Wardington, in whose collection it remained until his death. His landmark sale of important atlases and geographies in 2006 included some 20 copies of Ptolemy's Geography. Fairfax Murray German 348 and 348A; Harrisse 74; Phillips 359; Sabin 66478; Shirley 34; Streeter I:6.

From the library of President George Washington, with his bold signature on the half-title. The volume was presented to Washington, accompanied by a letter dated 15 July 1795, by the English physician Dr John Coakley Lettsom (1744 1815), and remained in his library until his death. Lettsom's letter, no longer present, mentions his American sympathies and shows that he is aware of Washington's lifelong devotion to the improvement of American agriculture: "Having been born an American, and early imbibed principles of liberty as established on that continent, I have probably received a stronger disposition, to promote, its prosperity, and particularly its agriculture, and the knowledge of its natural history and mineralogy." Along with the book, Lettsom enclosed some rhubarb seeds for Washington's use. Although they never met, the President and Lettsom had a mutual friend in William Thornton (1759 1828), best known in American history as the architect of the Capitol building. Thornton had moved to the new federal capital the year before this presentation, when President Washington appointed him one of the fledgling city's commissioners. Lettsom and Thornton were born in what is now the British Virgin Islands. Both were Quakers appalled by slavery, and both studied medicine. Thornton revered Lettsom as his mentor, but while Lettsom set up a medical practice in London and built a distinguished career there, Thornton became an American citizen. When Thornton prepared to go to America in 1784, it was Lettsom who wrote an introductory letter to Benjamin Franklin. Among Lettsom's many philanthropic achievements in London was assisting William Hawes in the foundation of the Royal Humane Society, of which Thornton was also a member. The Society's aim was to resuscitate anyone in a state of "suspended animation", such as the near-drowned or attempted suicides. The Society promoted novel resuscitative techniques, such as CPR and electric stimulation. They offered rewards to those who successfully resuscitated persons, organized rapid response teams to render first aid, and published reports on successful cases. The present volume documents hundreds of such cases and includes essays and letters from RHS members. The work of the RHS was addressing a widespread, potent fear of premature burial, a fear shared by George Washington. Shortly before he died in December 1799, he requested his secretary, Tobias Lear, to "have me decently buried; and do not let my body be put into the Vault in less than three days after I am dead". As he lay dying, a family member invited Thornton to Mount Vernon to see if he could use his medical training to help. Thornton was grief stricken to find that he had arrived too late, finding his hero's body frozen stiff. Remembering the experimental techniques of the RHS, Thornton proposed to reanimate Washington, first by thawing him in cool water, then gradually warming him, giving him a tracheotomy and a transfusion of lamb's blood. To Thornton's consternation, Washington's family refused to sanction the attempt. George Washington's Mount Vernon library comprised only about 900 books, with pamphlets and other publications taking it to a total of more than 1,200 titles. Books from Mount Vernon command notably high prices in commerce. On 22 June 2012 at Christie's New York, Washington's annotated copy of the Constitution and Bill of Rights set a then world auction record for an American book or historical document of $9,826,500. His copy of The Federalist presented by two of the authors and with his signature and bookplate in each volume was sold at auction at Sotheby's New York in 1990 for $1,430,000. Even odd volumes bring substantial prices: for example, the first volume only of Lesage's Gil Blas, $126,000 in 2021, or a mixed lot of volumes from Mount Vernon, $1,205,000 in 2013, both at Sotheby's New York. The heir to George Washington's library was one of his nephews, Bushrod Washington (1762 1829). After Bushrod Washington's death, what remained of the original Mount Vernon library and papers passed to Bushrod's two nephews, George Corbin Washington and John Augustine Washington II. George Corbin Washington sold his portion in two tranches, which eventually found their way to the Library of Congress and the Boston Athenaeum. This book was in the other half, inherited by John Augustine Washington II, which was sold at auction on 28 November 1876 by Thomas Birch's Sons in Philadelphia. It was purchased by John R. Baker, one of the sale's largest buyers. Baker's collection was resold 11 12 February 1891, again at Birch's Sons, where it was purchased by the American philanthropist Phoebe Apperson Hearst, wife of Senator George Hearst, and mother of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. The book was then either sold by Phoebe before her death in 1919 or bequeathed to her son William, although it does not appear in the catalogue for the sale of his library at Sotheby's in 1963. It turns up again in 1972 at Charles Hamilton Galleries in New York and has remained in private hands until this year. Listed in the official inventory of Washington's personal property at Mount Vernon taken by appraisers upon his death (see p. 426 in The Estate of George Washington, Deceased, Eugene Ernst Prussing, 1927); Griffin, Catalogue of the Washington Collection, 554. Octavo (200 x 127 mm). Contemporary red straight-grain morocco, presumably for presentation, spine lettered in gilt, gilt rules, gilt rope-roll to turn-ins, marbled endpapers, gilt edges. Housed in a red quarter morocco solander box by the Chelsea Bindery. Engraved portrait of George III and 2 engraved plates. Binding rubbed, spine with small scuffs, internally clean, very good condition.

No binding. Etat : Near fine. First. THE ORIGINALS DRAWINGS OF THE MOST AMBITIOUS STATE SURVEY OF MARYLAND. 1833-1837: 1. Manuscript map of Washington and Frederick Counties. 19 1/2" x 27 1/4", laid down on linen. Ink and wash. 2. Manuscript map of the District of Columbia and Anne Arundel, Montgomery and Prince George's Counties. 19 3/8" x 20 1/2", laid down on linen. Ink and wash. 3. Manuscript triangulation map of the northeastern part of the Atlantic Coastal Plain and the Piedmont Plateau. 21 3/4" x 29 1/2", laid down on linen. Graphite and red and black ink. 4. Manuscript map of Dorchester, Somerset and Worcester Counties. 19 1/2" x 27 1/2", laid down on linen. Ink and wash 5. Manuscript map of Kent, Queen Ann, Talbot and Caroline Counties. 19 1/2" x 17 1/4", laid down on linen. Ink and wash. 6. Manuscript map of Calvert, Charles and St. Mary Counties. 19 1/2" x 27 1/4", laid down on linen. Ink and wash. 7. Manuscript map of Allegany County (including modern Garrett County). 19 1/2" x 27 1/2", laid down on linen. Ink and wash. 8. Manuscript map of Baltimore, Harford and Cecil Counties. 7 3/4" x 12 3/8". Graphite. 9. Manuscript map of the state of Maryland. 16 1/4" x 28", laid down on linen. Ink. 10. Map, shewing the proposed Division of the Counties of Howard and Anne-Arundel. Baltimore: Edward Weber, [ca. 1837]. 13" x 22" sheet. Lithograph. 11. Map showing the proposed new Carroll ("Carrol") County and its surroundings. Baltimore: J. Penniman, [ca. 1835]. 16" x 10" sheet. On the verso, the text of the petition. [Individual condition reports available.] Each map with marginal pencil shelfmarks as well as inkstamps from the Enoch Pratt Free Library. In 1833, John Henry Alexander (1812-1867), twenty-one and already some years graduated from St. John's College in Annapolis, was commissioned by the Maryland General Assembly to survey and map the whole of its state for topographical and census purposes. Alexander as State Topographical Engineer with his friend Julius Ducatel, State Geologist, mapped the whole of the state with exceptional accuracy, issuing surveys with the General Assembly's annual reports through 1840. The present manuscript maps are the basis for those printed and published maps. Although the project was never completed, Alexander's is surely the largest contribution made by an individual to the mapping of a state. The small pencil map (8) shows an earlier phase of the mapmaking process; it would be enlarged and inked once it had been reviewed. Triangulation was the most accurate method of mapmaking up until satellite surveys; Alexander proposed to build on the work of the United States Office of Coast Survey, founded 1807 and re-established in 1832, which used the same method, but was sluggish in reaching Maryland. The general trigonometric plan is visible in map 3, but Alexander would not have the opportunity to bring it down to the county level. When funding stopped in 1841, he abandoned the project, and focused his efforts on his highly profitable coal mines in the western part of the state. (The Library of Congress holds a single three-sheet manuscript map of Alexander's (LCCN 77693816) from 1840, summing up all the work that had been done up to that point.) Alexander's maps would come to be of immense use in the Civil War in order to mount the defense of Washington, D.C. The collection of maps was given anonymously to the Maryland Academy of Sciences in January of 1878, though it is generally understood that the donor was the widow of Philip T. Tyson, the State Agricultural Chemist, who in 1859 brought to completion the geological survey that had stopped with Ducatel's death in 1849. The Maryland Academy of Sciences deposit the collection with the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore in 1937; the inkstamps and shelfmarks are from their collection. Papenfuse, Edward C. and Joseph M. Coale III. The Maryland State Archives Atlas of Historical Maps of Maryland 1608-1908. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003; 67-70.

Wandesburg (i.e. Wandsbeck, for the author by Philip Ohrs), 1598. Small folio. In the original blue silk binding with richly gilt ornamentation to boards. Professionally recased in the 1970'es with 90% of the original silk boards preserved over new blue silk. Green silk ties. A small, neat restoration to the border of the title-page, barely noticeable. A4 and H2 restored and at margins with newer paper margins in perceftly matching paper. The restoration touches the outer borders, most significantly on H2, where the inner border is almost covered by the new paper. The lower blank border of A4 cropped. Otherwise in splendid condition. 42 ff. With 22 magnificent full-page illustrations, of which 4 are engraved and the rest are woodcut. Title printed in red and black and all pages, including the title-page, printed within woodcut ornamental border. Large woodcut device to title-page, with spere and compass, and allegorical woodcut to colophon. Title-page (which is printed in red and black) is uncoloured, but all other leaves are in magnificent contemporary handcolouring, and many of the illutstrations are illuminated in gold. All woodcut borders couloured in green and greeninsh blue, and large initials, head-and tail-pieces and devise on colophon are coloured in various colours, as are all illustrations.The word "INGENIOSE" of the imperfectly printed headline on G3 supplied on manuscript (as in most known copies), presumably in Brahe's own hand. Exceedingly scarce first edition, hand-coloured gift-copy in the original gift-binding with a remarkable provenance, of Tycho Brahe?s monumental work, in which he depicts and describes his groundbreaking astronomical instruments as well as his observatory on Hven, gives an account of his contributions to astronomy, and showcases the beginning new astronomy and the invention of modern empirical science.One of presumably 60 copies printed, all produced for private distribution only, as the entire print run of the first printing were meant as presentation-copies, and one of ab. 40 copies known. Almost all surviving copies are ininstitutions. Lauritz Nielsen traced 42 copies, four of which were destroyed by war, and Norlind added a further five copies, plus ab. 9 copies mentioned in contemporary correspondence to have been sent by Brahe toluminaries of the period.This magnum opus of astronomy describes and depicts the astronomical inventions of Tycho Brahe, especially the instruments, through which the stars and planets could be observed and by which distances and ascensionscould be measured. Brahe had invented three types of instruments of monumental importance to the beginning of modern empirical science and crucial to the new astronomy that he invented. He describes three types of these instruments: 1.quadrants and sextants used for determining altitudes and azimuths" 2. armillary instruments for measuring right ascensions and declinations, or longitudes and latitudes with respect to the ecliptic and 3. instrumentsdesigned for the determination of angular distances between celestial bodies (sextants and the bipartite arc). ?The instruments of Tycho Brahe represent a major achievement in astronomical science, because they provided much more accurate readings than previously possible, and on the basis of Tycho Brahe's observations Keplerdetermined the laws of planetary motions and from these laws Newton discovered the law of gravity. Not until the invention of the telescope some years after Tycho Brahe's death was it possible to get more accuratereadings.? (From the Brahe exhibition at the Royal Library of Denmark).?Tycho Brahe?s instruments were at the heart of his contribution to the invention of modern empirical science.? (J.R. Christianson: Tycho Brahe?s Instruments).The instruments were built by Tycho Brahe and his staff between the 1570's and the time he left Hven. All of his instruments are now lost, and the primary source we have to the fountain of knowledge that they represent is the present work containing his own illustrations and descriptions of them.After his death, the instruments were kept in a cellar, where they were destroyed during the uprisings in Prague in 1619. The great globe ended up at the Round Tower in Copenhagen, where it was destroyed in the fire of1728. The building, including the observatories, on Hven are also destroyed and only few remains are left. A replica of the garden of Uraniborg and the foundations for the instruments at Stjerneborg has been created innewer times.The present copy has a remarkable provenance, as it comes from Brahe?s childhood home, Tosterup Castle, where he lived since the age of one, with his uncle and aunt, who had ?adopted? him and were the only parentshe was to know. The book has been at Tosterup for almost four centuries and has only changed hands once before now. The copy bears no markings of ownership, but was presumably sent by Brahe from Wandsbeck to his family at Tosterup Castle in Denmark right after printing. It remained there until ab. 50 years ago, when it was giftedaway by the owners of Tosterup.Tycho Brahe?s birth parents, Beate Bille and Otto Brahe had been married for two years and already had a daughter, when they had Tycho. One year after his birth, in 1547, they had a second son. ?Now, Otto and Beatehad two healthy sons, and ?it happened by a particular decree of Fate? that Tycho was taken away ?without the knowledge of my parents? by ?my beloved paternal uncle Jørgen Brahe, who? brought me up, and thereafter hesupported me generously during my lifetime until my eighteenth year, and he always treated me as his own son? For his own marriage was childless.? Jørgen Brahe of Tosterup was married to ?the noble and wise MistressInger Oxe, a sister of the great Peder Oxe, who later became [Steward of the Realm] of the Danish royal court [and who] as long as she lived regarded me with exceptional love, as if I were her own son?.? (J.R.Christianson: Tycho Brahe and the Measure of the H.

DARWIN'S FIRST SEPARATELY PRINTED WORK - INSCRIBED. First edition, very rare, inscribed by John Stevens Henslow, of Darwin's first separately printed work and his first account in print of his discoveries on the Beagle. "During his five-year voyage on HMS Beagle, Darwin maintained a correspondence with John Stevens Henslow, his mentor in natural history and lifelong friend; it was Henslow who had obtained for Darwin the post of ship's naturalist on the Beagle. The present pamphlet contains extracts made by Henslow from ten of Darwin's letters" (Norman). Henslow had this pamphlet printed without Darwin's knowledge for distribution amongst the members of the Cambridge Philosophical Society "in consequence of the interest which has been excited by some of the Geological notices which they contain, and which were read at a Meeting of the Society on the 16th of November 1835" (p. [1]), an act which secured Darwin's reputation with the scientific community even before his return to England in October, 1836. Freeman states that 'it has always been assumed that it was issued . in December 1835, and this is probably so, but I have not seen a copy with a dated ownership inscription or accession stamp for that year.' The pamphlet was printed without Darwin's knowledge; when he learned of it he confessed himself 'a good deal horrified' at Henslow making public 'what had been written without care or accuracy . but, as the Spaniard says, 'No hay remedio''" (Barlow (ed.), Charles Darwin and the Voyage of the Beagle, pp. 140-142)" (Norman). "Darwin, however, was mollified when he learned from his sister that the booklet had been well received and that Henslow had told the Darwin family that young Charles would surely be placed 'among the first naturalists of the day.' He was particularly gratified to learn that his father, who had had doubts about Charles's decision to pursue a career in natural history, 'did not move from his seat till he had read every word of your book . he liked so much the simple clear way you gave information'" (Gibson, The Spirit of Inquiry: How one extraordinary society shaped modern science, pp. 89-90). "Despite Henslow's reservations about the evolutionary ideas put forward in Origin - he thought Darwin had 'pressed his hypothesis too far' -the two men remained friends to the end of Henslow's life; more than 140 letters between them survive. Darwin continued to rely on Henslow for information on a variety of plants, and wrote of him after his death 'a better man never walked this earth'" (Darwin Correspondence Project). A proof copy with some twenty corrections in pencil was sold by Sotheby's on 13 March 1973 (lot 404), and since then only four other copies have sold at auction, including a copy presented by Henslow toOxford's Ashmolean Natural History Society. Provenance: Inscribed at the head of the first page 'from Professor Henslo[w] / [18]38'; Sir Geoffrey Keynes, surgeon and bibliophile (1887-1982), ownership inscription on folding case dated 1937; his son (and Charles Darwin's great-grandson), Prof. Richard Keynes (1919-2010), physiologist and Darwin scholar. "Darwin came to know Henslow through his attendance at his scientific talks and outings at Cambridge University. He had heard of Henslow through his brother Erasmus who greatly revered him as a man of scientific brilliance and integrity. Inspired by Henslow he soon became a visitor to Henslow's house and subsequently met the scientific fraternity. "The British Admiralty Hydrographer of the Navy, Francis Beaufort, was part of the Cambridge network, and keen to promote science. When organising the second survey voyage of HMS Beagle, he took up captain Robert FitzRoy's suggestion of taking along a geologist, and asked his friend the mathematician George Peacock to 'recommend a proper person to go out as a naturalist with this expedition.' Peacock offered the place to the Reverend Leonard Jenyns, who got as far as packing his clothes before having second thoughts. Henslow thought of going, but his wife 'looked so miserable' that he turned it down. "Henslow obviously rated Darwin highly, though at the time science was not a formally recognised subject at Cambridge. Henslow replied to Peacock that Darwin was 'the best qualified person I know of who is likely to undertake such a situation', and then wrote a letter to Darwin who was then on a field trip in Wales studying practical geology with Adam Sedgwick (Professor of Geology). When Darwin returned to Shrewsbury on 29 August 1831 he found the letter from Henslow telling him of the offer. His father was opposed to the idea, so Darwin turned it down, but his uncle overcame the objections, and on 1 September Darwin accepted the self-funded position. "Preparations were quickly made. Darwin insisted that his collections would be under his own control, subject to them going to a suitable public body. Henslow had hopes for the small Cambridge Philosophical Society museum, but Darwin diplomatically said new finds should go to the 'largest & most central collection' rather than a 'Country collection, let it be ever so good.' FitzRoy arranged transport of specimens to England by the Admiralty Packet Service, and Henslow agreed to store them at Cambridge. Darwin confirmed with him arrangements for land carriage from the port. "After delays, the Beagle set off on 27 December 1831. They visited Atlantic islands, then reached South America on 4 April 1832. Darwin, delighted by his geological findings, collections of organisms and by the sights of the tropics, waited until they were at Rio de Janeiro to write the first of a series of letters to Henslow. "Extracts were taken from ten letters: On 18 May, staying onshore in a cottage at Botafogo near Rio de Janeiro, Darwin wrote summarising his research since leaving England. On 15 August he wrote from Montevideo about specimens collected in tropical forests, and described the first box of specimens, which he was sending by the Admiralty.

An exceptional copy of this rare early Venetian printing of Ibn Sina's medical encyclopaedia in Latin, issued with De viribus cordis as often. This copy is in a beautifully preserved Italian period binding. No complete copies are traced at auction in over 80 years. The first edition of Avicenna's Canon, in the standard Latin translation by Gerard of Cremona, appeared in Padua in December 1472. The original Arabic text was first printed in Rome in 1593. De viribus cordis, a treatise on psychiatry, was translated into Latin by Arnaldo de Villa Nova and featured as an addendum to early editions of the Canon from 1476. Drawing from the writings of Hippocrates, Galen, and Aristotle, as well as from the author's own experience as physician to the Emir of Bockhara, Canon "stands for the epitome of all precedent development, the final codification of all Graeco-Arabic medicine" (Neuburger, p. 368). Published in 17 editions before 1500 and consistently reprinted afterwards, this work dominated as the most authoritative medical text in universities for five centuries. It is divided into five books dealing respectively with the scope of medicine and anatomy, medical substances, special pathology, general pathology, and compound drugs. The book "contains many original observations. Avicenna recognized the distribution of diseases by water and soil. in the section Materia Medica he records seven hundred and sixty drugs and, for the first time, the preparation and properties of alcohol. Avicenna's work transmitted to the West the ideas of the Greek writers and also introduced ideas of his own which in some respects superseded them" (PMM). The binding can be securely identified as Italian from the style of the blind-stamped motifs and from the position of the brass catches on the rear board (as opposed to the front board), as well as their peculiar trilobate shape and engraved decoration. Similarly shaped and decorated catches or brass fittings can be seen on bindings of this period illustrated by de Marinis (cfr. vol. II, no. 2507; vol. I, no. 369) and in the online database of the Civic Library Angelo Mai (binding Sala 1 D 8 7). The blind rolls of rosettes and palmettes, and the small cruciform tools, were all very popular designs at the time and are not indicative of a specific geographical area. The binder has used, as a rear endpaper, a bifolium from an unidentified printed edition of Stellarum fata anni 1477, an astronomical and astrological prognostic for the year 1477 written in Bologna by the Polish scholar Nicolaus Wodka (c.1442-1494). This is a remarkable survival, as this text is otherwise only known in a single manuscript example preserved in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich (Ms. Monac. 647, fol. 51ss). Wodka was teaching astronomy in Bologna in the late 1470s, before moving to Urbino, and subsequently to Krakow, where he became one of Copernicus's teachers. Throughout his career, he wrote a few astrological texts. Prognostics were popular and those by prominent astronomers often printed in multiple centres simultaneously. This edition of Stellarum fata could have been printed in Bologna, Venice, or Rome. BSB-Ink A-959; GW 3120; Heirs of Hippocrates 67 (1498 ed.); ISTC ia01422000; Garrison-Morton online 43 (1473 ed.); Printing and the Mind of Man 11 (1st ed.). Tammaro de Marinis, La Legatura Artistica in Italia nei Secoli XV e XVI, 1960; Max Neuburger, History of Medicine, Vol. I, 1910. Median quarto (226 x 168 mm), in two parts. Contemporary Italian sheep over bevelled boards, rebacked with original spine laid down, spine with blind-ruled raised bands, blind lines and ornaments in compartments, covers panelled in blind, first border with scroll of rosettes, second border with all-over pattern of small crosses, central panel with three juxtaposed rolls of palmettes and rosettes, bifolium from an unidentified printed edition of Nicolaus Wodka's Stellarum fata (1476) used as rear endpaper, brass catches engraved with "AVE" and floral designs, traces of ties. Text in gothic type, double column, part headings printed in red, that for book V omitted. Early page marker made from a vellum manuscript (Hebrew text, red initials) loosely inserted. Corners worn, a few small worm holes to boards extending partially to text (affecting some letters, but entirely legible), intermittent faint damp stains to margins, otherwise generally bright and clean. A beautifully preserved, well-margined, and crisp copy.

First edition of "certainly the most important biological book ever written" (Freeman), one of 1250 copies. Octavo, bound in original cloth, half-title, one folding lithographed diagram, without advertisements. In very good condition with cracks to inner hinges and a touch of shelfwear. Housed in a custom clamshell box. A fine example of this landmark work. Darwin â revolutionized our methods of thinking and our outlook on the natural order of things. The recognition that constant change is the order of the universe had been finally established and a vast step forward in the uniformity of nature had been takenâ (PMM 344). â Without question a watershed work in the history of modern life sciences, Darwinâ s Origin elaborated a proposition that species slowly evolve from common ancestors through the mechanism of natural selection. As he himself expected, Darwinâ s theory became, and continues to be in some circles, the object of intense controversyâ (American Philosophical Society). â The five years [of Darwinâ s voyage on the Beagle] were the most important event in Darwinâ s intellectual life and in the history of biological science. Darwin sailed with no formal training. He returned a hard-headed man of scienceâ ¦ The experiences of his five years in the Beagle, how he dealt with them, and what they led to, built up into a process of epoch-making importance in the history of thoughtâ (PMM).

Three volumes. Elephant folio. (27 1/4 x 21 1/4 inches). First edition. Three lithograph title-pages, three leaves of letterpress contents. 150 hand-colored lithograph plates by John T. Bown of Philadelphia after John James Audubon and John Woodhouse Audubon, the backgrounds after Victor Audubon. Expertly bound to style in purple half morocco over period purple cloth boards, spine with raised bands lettered in the second and third compartments, the others decorated in gilt, marbled edges and endpapers. Within grey cloth clamshell cases with red morocco lettering-pieces in gilt. [With:] The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America. New York: John James Audubon, 1846-1851-1854. 3 volumes, small 4to (10 x 7 inches). Half-titles, list of subscribers. 6 hand-colored lithograph plates. Expertly bound to style uniform to the above in purple half morocco over period purple cloth boards, marbled endpapers. A beautiful set of the first elephant folio edition of Audubon's "Quadrupeds," complete with the rare text volumes with six additional hand-colored plates. This is Audubon's final great natural history work. Unlike the double-elephant folio edition of The Birds of America, which was printed in London, the Quadrupeds was produced in the United States. It was the largest and most significant color-plate book produced in America in the nineteenth-century, and a fitting monument to Audubon's continuing genius. The work was originally published in thirty parts, each containing five plates, and priced at ten dollars per number. The first proofs were ready in 1842, but Audubon was fully employing the services of the lithographer Bowen on the octavo edition of The Birds of America, which was the greatest moneymaker of any of the Audubon family ventures. Instead, Audubon and his sons busied themselves in gathering subscribers, signing up over two hundred by the summer of 1844 (eventually the subscription list reached three hundred). The last part of the octavo Birds appeared in May 1844; publication of the folio Quadrupeds commenced immediately after with the first number being issued in January 1845 and the first volume completed within the year. Audubon's health began to fail dramatically, and responsibility for new artwork fell mainly on his son John Woodhouse Audubon, with some help from his brother Victor. The second volume was completed in March 1847. But as John Woodhouse traveled first to Texas, then to London and Europe, the pace slowed further. The final number was issued early in 1849. By this time the elder Audubon had succumbed to senility ("His mind is all in ruins," Bachman wrote sadly in June 1848). Audubon died in early 1851. In the end, about half of the plates for Quadrupeds were based on the works of John James and half on John Woodhouse. Audubon's collaborator on the text of the Quadrupeds was the naturalist and Lutheran clergyman, Bachman, who was a recognized authority on the subject in the United States. The two began their association when Audubon stayed with Bachman and his family in Charleston for a month in 1831. This friendship was later cemented by the marriage of Audubon's sons, Victor and John, to Bachman's daughters, Maria and Eliza. Audubon knew Bachman's contribution to the Quadrupeds would be crucial, especially because of concerns over his own technical knowledge. By 1840, Bachman had become indispensable to the Quadrupeds project, and as Audubon showed increasing signs of illness, found himself writing most of the text, with some help from Victor who was the project's primary business manager. The text appeared between December 1846 and the spring of 1854. Two issues of the third volume of the text are known, the present being the preferred second issue, with the supplementary text and the six octavo-sized plates issued in 1854, those six images not found in the folio. The elephant folio edition of Audubon's Quadrupeds will always be compared to Audubon's incomparable Birds. It should be judged in its own right, as one of the grandest American works of natural history ever produced, and one of the greatest American illustrated works ever created. Bennett, p.5. Ford, Audubon's Animals, passim. Peck, "Audubon and Bachman, a Collaboration in Science," pp.71-115, in Boehme's John James Audubon in the West. Nissen 162. Reese, Stamped with a National Character 36. Sabin 2367. Tyler, "The Publication of the Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America," pp.119-182 in Boehme. Wood, p.208.

First complete edition of "the most important scientific book of eighteenth-century America" (PMM), inscribed by Benjamin Franklin to prominent Pennsylvania Quaker and merchant Thomas Livezey, Jr. Quarto, bound in full contemporary calf with elaborate gilt tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, morocco spine label lettered in gilt, gilt turn-ins. Illustrated with 7 copper-engraved plates, 2 of which are folding. Presentation copy, inscribed by Benjamin Franklin on the front free endpaper, â To Mr. Livesy [sic] From his obliged Friend & humble Servant The Author.â With Thomas Livezey's ownership signature to the second free endpaper, "Thomas Livezey Junior 1810." The recipient, Thomas Livezey Jr. (1723-1790), was a member of the fourth generation of the prominent Pennsylvania Quaker Livezey family. His ancestor, Thomas Livezey, the elder (1627-1691), was among the earliest settlers of Pennsylvania; his land was a portion of William Penn's Pennsylvania colony and was granted to him directly by Penn in an early patent. Thomas Livezey Jr. established one of the largest ï our mills in colonial British North America, the Livezey Mill, and rose to prominence as one of the major suppliers of high quality ï our to the world during that era. Situated on Wissahickon Creek in Philadelphia, the Livezey Mill was a major colonial operation, provided flour both domestically and overseas, and fed numerous armies throughout the eighteenth century including those fighting on both sides of the American Revolution. The mill was in continued operation for more than one hundred twenty-ï ve years until roughly 1874. Livezey was elected to the colony of Pennsylvania's legislative body, the Pennsylvania Assembly, in 1765. BenjamÃn Franklin had been elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly 14 years earlier in 1751 and in 1764 (one year prior to Livezey's appointment), Franklin was sent to London by the Pennsylvania Assembly as a colonial agent to protest against the political influence of the Penn family, with whom the assembly was becoming increasingly frustrated. He remained there for five years, striving to end the Penn family's prerogative to overturn legislation from the elected Assembly and their exemption from paying taxes on their land. His lack of influential allies in Whitehall led to the failure of this mission. Franklin and Livezey were warm acquaintances, despite their differences. In late 1767, Livezey sent a case of wine he had made from wild grapes to Franklin in London, writing, â I heartely wish it may arive Safe, and warm the hearts of Every one who tastes it, with a Love for America. And would it Contribute towards bringing about a Change of Government but one month Sooner, I would Gladly Send all I have.â In early 1768, Franklin thanked Livezey in a letter, stating that he â shall apply this parcel as I did the last towards winning the hearts of the Friends of our Country, and wellwishers to the Change of its Government.â PMM 199; Grolier 100 American Books 10; Dibner Heralds of Science 57. Presentation copies of this first collected edition are scarce. This is the only presentation copy to a known recipient to appear on the market over the course of the past century. In very good condition. Housed in custom three quarter morocco clamshell box. "â Franklinâ s most important scientific publication,â Experiments and Observations contains detailed accounts of the founding fatherâ s crucial kite and key experiment, his work with Leiden jars, lightning rods and charged clouds (Norman 830). â The most dramatic result of Franklinâ s researches was the proof that lightning is really an electrical phenomenon. Others had made such a suggestion before himâ " even Newton himselfâ " but it was he who provided the experimental proofâ (PMM). â The lightning experiments caused Franklinâ s name to become known throughout Europe to the public at large and not merely to men of science. Joseph Priestley, in his History of Electricity, characterized the experimental discovery that the lightning discharge is an electrical phenomenon as â the greatest, perhaps, since the time of Isaac Newtonâ ¦ Franklinâ s achievementâ ¦ marked the coming of age of electrical science and the full acceptance of the new field of specializationâ (DSB).

First edition. PMM 25 - the oldest textbook in the history of science. First edition of the "oldest mathematical textbook still in common use today" (PMM), This book "has exercised an influence upon the human mind greater than that of any other work except the Bible" (DSB). Euclid's Elements is the only work of classical antiquity to have remained continuously in print, and to be used continuously as a textbook from the pre-Christian era to the 20th century. It is the foundation work not only for geometry but also for number theory. Euclid's Elements of Geometry is a compilation of early Greek mathematical knowledge, synthesized and systematically presented by Euclid in ca. 300 BC. Books I-IV are devoted to plane geometry, Book V deals with the theory of proportions, and Book VI with the similarity of plane figures. Books VII-IX are on number theory, Book X on commensurability and incommensurability, Books XI-XII explore three dimensional geometric objects, and Book XIII deals with the construction of the five regular solids. The text is the standard late-medieval recension of Campanus of Novara, based principally on the 12th-century translation from the Arabic by Adelard of Bath. In fact, Adelard left three Latin versions of Euclid. Campanus's text is a free reworking of earlier Latin translations, mainly Adelard's second version (an abbreviated paraphrase), with additional proofs that make it "the most adequate Arabic-Latin Euclid of all . With an eye to making the Elements as self-contained as possible, he devoted considerable care to the elucidation and discussion of what he felt to be obscure and debatable points" (DSB). This text was printed more than a dozen times in the late-15th and 16th century. The "decisive influence of Euclid's geometrical conception of mathematics is reflected in two of the supreme works in the history of thought, Newton's Principia and Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft" (DSB). Ratdolt's edition is one of the most beautifully printed of early scientific books, and is the first dated book with diagrams (Stillwell). His method of printing diagrams in the margins to illustrate a mathematical text became a model for much subsequent scientific publishing. The method used to is still a matter of scholarly debate: although traditionally described as woodcuts, it is probable that printer's "rules" were used, i.e., thin strips of metal, type high, which were bent and cut and adjusted and set into a substance that would hold them (and pieces of type) in place. Born ca. 300 BC in Alexandria, Egypt, "Euclid compiled his Elements from a number of works of earlier men. Among these are Hippocrates of Chios (flourished c. 440 BC), not to be confused with the physician Hippocrates of Cos (c. 460-375 BC). The latest compiler before Euclid was Theudius, whose textbook was used in the Academy and was probably the one used by Aristotle (384-322 BC). The older elements were at once superseded by Euclid's and then forgotten. For his subject matter Euclid doubtless drew upon all his predecessors, but it is clear that the whole design of his work was his own . "Euclid understood that building a logical and rigorous geometry depends on the foundation-a foundation that Euclid began in Book I with 23 definitions (such as "a point is that which has no part" and "a line is a length without breadth"), five unproved assumptions that Euclid called postulates (now known as axioms), and five further unproved assumptions that he called common notions. Book I then proves elementary theorems about triangles and parallelograms and ends with the Pythagorean theorem . "The subject of Book II has been called geometric algebra because it states algebraic identities as theorems about equivalent geometric figures. Book II contains a construction of "the section," the division of a line into two parts such that the ratio of the larger to the smaller segment is equal to the ratio of the original line to the larger segment. (This division was renamed the golden section in the Renaissance after artists and architects rediscovered its pleasing proportions.) Book II also generalizes the Pythagorean theorem to arbitrary triangles, a result that is equivalent to the law of cosines. Book III deals with properties of circles and Book IV with the construction of regular polygons, in particular the pentagon. "Book V shifts from plane geometry to expound a general theory of ratios and proportions that is attributed by Proclus (along with Book XII) to Eudoxus of Cnidus (c. 395/390-342/337 BC). While Book V can be read independently of the rest of the Elements, its solution to the problem of incommensurables (irrational numbers) is essential to later books. In addition, it formed the foundation for a geometric theory of numbers until an analytic theory developed in the late 19th century. Book VI applies this theory of ratios to plane geometry, mainly triangles and parallelograms, culminating in the "application of areas," a procedure for solving quadratic problems by geometric means. "Books VII-IX contain elements of number theory, where number (arithmos) means positive integers greater than 1. Beginning with 22 new definitions-such as unity, even, odd, and prime-these books develop various properties of the positive integers. For instance, Book VII describes a method, antanaresis (now known as the Euclidean algorithm), for finding the greatest common divisor of two or more numbers; Book VIII examines numbers in continued proportions, now known as geometric sequences (such as ax, ax2, ax3, ax4, .); and Book IX proves that there are an infinite number of primes. "According to Proclus, Books X and XIII incorporate the work of the Pythagorean Thaetetus (c. 417-369 BC). Book X, which comprises roughly one-fourth of the Elements, seems disproportionate to the importance of its classification of incommensurable lines and areas (although study of this book would inspire Johannes Kepler [1571-1630] in his search for a cosmological model).

Hardcover. Etat : Very Good. 1st Edition. THE GOLDEN SET, COLORED, WITH THE PUBLISHER'S WRAPPERS. Four volumes (two text, two plates). Coblenz: J. Hoelscher; 1839-41. Text-volumes: quarto (12 7/16" x 10 1/16", 316mm x 256mm). Vignettes: oblong folio (17" x 22 ¼", 431mm x 563mm). Tableaux: oblong folio (18 1/16" x 24 3/8", 459mm x 619mm). [Full collation available.] With 81 hand-colored aquatint-engraved plates, a lithographed chart and a lithographed map, hand-colored in outline. Bound in modern half black morocco gilt over blue paste-paper. On the text volumes' spine, author, title and number gilt within scrollwork. Top edges of the text-block gilt, fore and lower edges untrimmed. On the two plate volumes, author and title gilt to black morocco on the front boards. On the spines, 7 pairs of gilt fillets. [Full condition report available.] Very good, with scattered faults. Alexander Philipp Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied (1782-1867) was a protégé of Alexander von Humboldt, the all-encompassing man of Enlightenment science, who passed on to the young princeling his own passion for exploration. Indeed, Humboldt's travels through the Americas 1799-1804 sparked Prince Maximilian -- born the grandson of the ruling prince, and his father's fifth son; i.e., with no chance of ruling -- to do the same. Self-funded, Maximilian set off for Brazil 1815-1817, that trip being published from 1820 through 1850. Encouraged by his success, Maximilian made a second trip to America -- this through North America, getting as far west as Ft. McKenzie in Montana -- from 1832 to 1834, and now accompanied by the Swiss painter Karl Bodmer (1809-1893). The combination of the Humboldt-trained prince and the superbly sensitive artist Bodmer produced the best account of the American West, free from jingoism and agenda. Production of the work was lengthy, costly and complex (the Joslyn Art Museum's Karl Bodmer's North American Prints, edited by Brandon K. Ruud, is indispensable for its analysis). The question of coloration is vexatious to collectors, but Ruud corrects the "misinformation" that only the 46 subscribers' sets were fully colored; he estimates in fact that between 100 and 200 sets were colored in the XIXc either by Hölscher or the English (Ackermann) or French (Bertrand) publishers. Earlier cataloguers of the present item have called it "a later compiled set with resulting variance to margins, blind stamps and paper stock." The question of margins (generally about a centimeter along the long edge) is begged by the exceptional size of our set's plates; our set's Vignettes are some 5 ½" taller and wider than the Bobins set's. As with so many XIXc plate-books issued in parts, there was some natural variation in the size of the finished sheets; most were likely trimmed down to a uniform size, but the present set -- especially the large Vignettes -- seems not to have been. The variance in blind stamps is slight; 91% have the C. Bodmer control stamp, 5% have the earlier Ch. Bodmer stamp and only 3 (4%) are unstamped. I cannot detect variation in the paper stock (although some have tanned and others have not). Thanks to Ruud 2004, one can now make definitive study of the states of the plates (a spreadsheet is available). In the present set, 69 (85%) of the plates are in state 1, 11 are in state 2 (Tableaux 1, 18, 22, 42 and 46; Vignettes 1, 2, 4, 10, 12 and 18) and 1 in state 3 (Tableau 17). Crucially, none of the plates has the date, which is the hallmark of a later set. The set was purchased at the Sotheby's New York sale of John Golden (22 November 2022, lot 48), "Book Illustration in the Age of Scientific Discovery." Completely colored sets receive Howes's highest scarcity rating: dd ("superlatively rare books, almost unobtainable"). Abbey 615; Howes M 443a; Sabin 47014; Wagner-Camp 76:1. Ruud, Brandon K. (ed.). Karl Bodmer's North American Prints. Omaha, Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press for the Joslyn Art Museum, 2004.

Small 4to (140 x 195 mm). 91 leaves, 149 written pages in two hands, the main body of the text complete, up to 29 lines per page, ruled space 85 x 155 mm. Incipit: "In nomine domini amen. Noch dem also gesprochen ist daß alle kunst kunftigk ist von got und ist by im on ende.". Rubrics touched in red, calligraphic initials in red and some with flourishing, 25 watercolour illustrations of scientific apparatus, 10 mathematical and architectural diagrams in pen. 15th century German calf over wooden boards, tooled in blind with vertical rows of hunting scenes within a triple-filet frame, remains of two fore-edge clasps. Stored in custom-made half morocco clamshell case. A Renaissance alchemist's handbook, quoting Al-Razi by name and deeply rooted in the Islamic tradition of alchemical art. An intriguing manuscript which bears witness to early practical chemistry in 15th century Germany and to the immense influence of Arabic alchemy, illustrated with talented watercolour diagrams of the associated apparatus. - Indeed, the word 'alchemy' itself is derived from the Arabic word 'al-kimia', and it was Al-Razi who claimed that "the study of philosophy could not be considered complete, and a learned man could not be called a philosopher, until he has succeeded in producing the alchemical transmutation". Alchemy and chemistry often overlapped in the early Islamic world, but "for many years Western scholars ignored Al-Razi's praise for alchemy, seeing alchemy instead as a pseudoscience, false in its purposes and fundamentally wrong in its methods, closer to magic and superstition than to the 'enlightened' sciences. Only in recent years have pioneering studies conducted by historians of science, philologists, and historians of the book demonstrated the importance of alchemical practices and discoveries in creating the foundations of modern chemistry" (Ferrario). The quest to transmute base metals into gold and to obtain the Philosophers' Stone was a practical as well as theoretical pursuit, as attested by the existence of this manuscript. The main body of the text opens on fol. 5 with an introduction to the art of alchemy, whose practice requires reference to the ancient authorities. Recipes for the various pigments, solutions, acids and alkalis are listed in groups, before descriptions are given of the planets relevant to the alchemist's art, starting with Saturn, and their effect on the elements, again with reference to the ancient authorities including Al-Razi, Origen, Aristotle, Albertus Magnus, and Hermes Trismegistus. There follow notes on the ease of obtaining various elements, before lists of alchemical compounds - including 'sal petri' and 'aqua lunaris' - are grouped according to their nature. Practical instructions, organised by chapter, begin on fol. 17v with the manufacture of vermillion and 'spangrün'; the first of the illustrations depicts two vessels for the burning of cinnabar. Further recipes involve the burning of various substances - illustrated with drawings of furnaces, cucurbits and other vessels, and distillation apparatus - before moving on to the manufacture of acids, bases and oils, mentioning the use of quicksilver, then, finally, turning to the manufacture of gold. The end of the text on fol. 69 is marked with the words 'Alchimia & Scientia' in red ink with calligraphic flourishes, above a floral device. - Collation: written by another scribe and bound before the alchemist's handbook (ff. 5-69) are astrological calculations, including those charting the trajectories of the Sun and the Moon (ff. 1-4, obviously incomplete). At the end, 9 leaves with geometrical calculations, illustrated with pen diagrams (ff. 70v-78, apparently incomplete, 2 leaves loose). The last 12 leaves are blanks (ff. 79-91). - Condition: The binding is sound and intact, but shows significant losses to the upper cover; spine entirely lost. Two leaves loose at the end of the manuscript, outer margins waterstained and tattered, surface soiling most notable to f. 1. Occasionally loose and split at gatherings; presence of bookworm damage on some pages; very occasional wax stains. - Provenance: 1) The script, watermark and binding indicate that the manuscript was made in Germany in the final two decades of the 15th century. The watermark visible on certain pages - a heart beneath a crown, above 'Ib' - is closest to a motif widely used in Germany around 1480-1500 (cf. Piccard 32464-32481), and the binding is contemporary. The pastedowns, taken from a Litany of Saints, are also roughly contemporary. 2) This compendium of cryptic knowledge seems to have lain undisturbed for many years after its compilation: the contemporary stamped leather binding is preserved and no booklabels or ownership inscriptions mark the manuscript changing hands. 3) Zisska & Schauer, 4 May 2010, lot 6. 4) Braunschweig Collection, Paris. - The first pigment recipe books in German would not be published until the 1530s (cf. Schießl, Die deutschsprachige Literatur zu Werkstoffen und Techniken der Malerei, 1989). While the manual at hand never appeared in print, a much later manuscript of the same text, apparently copied by no less an authority than the botanist Hieronymus Bock (1498-1554), survives in Heidelberg's University Library under the title of "Ordenlicher proces der waren alten heimlichen kunst der alchymey in drey bucher gestelt" ("Alchemistisches Kunstbuch", Cod. Pal. germ. 294, dated to the middle or third quarter of the 16th century). Unlike the vividly coloured and deftly shaded illustrations in the present volume from the 15th century, the unsophisticated pen drawings in the later Palatina manuscript were clearly executed by the scribe himself rather than by a trained artist. Also, our manual contains additional illustrations at the end, showing some of the most necessary equipment on a double-page spread, as well as five additional pages of recipes for "lutum sapientiae", "postulatz golt" etc., some parts written in a secr.

Small folio. 5½ pp. On paper watermarked "Whiting Mutual Bond - Rag Content". German-language draft for "The Essence of the Theory of Relativity", an article published in English within volume XVI of "The American Peoples Encyclopedia" (1948). After a general introduction, the "special theory of relativity" and the "general theory of relativity" are discussed, with a few equations and a small graph sketch. - "Die Mathematik hat es ausschliesslich zu thun mit der Beziehung von Begriffen zu einander ohne Rücksicht auf die Beziehung zu Erfahrungs-Gegenständen. Die Physik hat es zwar auch mit mathematischen Begriffen zu thun; diese Begriffe erlangen aber physikalischen Inhalt nur dadurch, dass ihre Beziehung zu Erfahrungs-Gegenständen in klarer Weise festgelegt wird. So verhält es sich im Besonderen auch mit den Begriffen Bewegung, Raum, Zeit. Die Relativitätstheorie ist jene physikalische Theorie, die auf einer konsequenten physikalischen Interpretation dieser drei Begriffe beruht. Der Name 'Relativitätstheorie' hängt damit zusammen, dass Bewegung vom Standpunkt der Erfahrbarkeit stets als relative Bewegung eines Dinges gegen andere (z. B. eines Wagens gegenüber dem Erdboden, oder der Erde gegenüber der Sonne und den Fixsternen) auftritt (Bewegung ist aber nicht wahrnehmbar als 'Bewegung gegen den Raum' oder - wie man es auch ausgedrückt hat - als 'absolute Bewegung'). Das 'Relativitätsprinzip' im weitesten Sinne ist in der Aussage enthalten: Die Gesamtheit der physikalischen Phänomene ist so beschaffen, dass sie für die Aufstellung des Begriffes 'absolute Bewegung' keinen Anhalt bietet, oder kürzer aber weniger präzis: Es gibt keine absolute Bewegung [.]". - Traces of a paperclip with a slight rustmark to the first leaf.

Hardcover. Etat : Very Good. 1st Edition. Folio (388 x 250 mm). Work in five parts, each with separate half-title page, but continuous pagination and signatures. Text in Latin with small sections in Greek. [40], 337, [3] pp., folding letterpress table, woodcut initials, head- and tailpieces, approx. 300 woodcut diagrams in text, complete with first and final blanks. Signatures: [pi]2 (2*-4*)6 (A-2D)6 2E8 ([pi]1, 2E8 blanks). Recased in early 18th century vellum, new endpapers, brown-dyed edges. Text mostly heavily browned, tiny holes in leaves O6 and P1 with loss of a few letters of text, repaired tear in leaf T1 without loss, a few wormholes at gutter (sometimes touching text), burn hole in leaf S6. Provenance: "Pertinet ad Bibliothecam [--]", obscured inscription on title-page. Although heavily browned as usual, a very good and wide-margined copy. ---- FIRST EDITION, AND EXCEPTIONALLY RARE, of Kepler's most important work and a masterpiece of modern astronomy containing the first enunciation of the first two laws of planetary motion: the law of elliptical orbits, formulating that the orbits of planets are shown to be elliptic rather than circular, demonstrated by his calculations of the orbit of Mars, and the law of equal areas, which shows that the planets move faster when they are closer to the sun. In 1607 Kepler had the wood blocks cut in Prague, and in 1608 he sent the text to be printed by the successors of Ernst Vögelin (1529-89) in Heidelberg. The absence of an imprint was due to the fact that the edition was not intended for commerce: the Emperor held the rights to its distribution, since Kepler had written it in his post of court astronomer, and it had been printed at imperial expense. Kepler, however, thought otherwise, his salary being long in arrears, and he sold his copies to the publisher. Although the size of the press run is not recorded, Kepler later stated that only "a few copies" had been printed (Caspar, p. 55). The influence this book had on other great astronomers, from his contemporary Galileo to the later Newton, was substantial and enabled Newton to form his own laws of motion and universal gravitation. Kepler's and Newton's laws became the basis of celestial mechanics. Kepler, a student of the "cautious Copernican" Michael Maestlin in Tübingen, used Copernicus's theory of heliocentrism as the basis for his treatise, and combined it with the observational accuracy of Tycho Brahe, whose calculations he acquired through his post as imperial mathematician to Rudolf II, following Tycho's death in Prague in 1601. Disagreement with Tycho's heirs led to delays with the publication which only commenced in the summer of 1608, once Tycho's son-in-law, Franz Tengnagel, was able to add a note to the reader regarding Kepler's deviance from Tycho's calculations. The publication was supposed to be distributed privately by the Emperor, who held the rights to its distribution, since Kepler had written it in his post of court astronomer, but Kepler sold some copies to the printer Ernst Vögelin successors in Heidelberg in an attempt to recoup some of his salary, which was in arrears. Although the size of the press run is not recorded, Kepler later stated that only "a few copies" had been printed (see Caspar, p. 55). Johannes Kepler stands, with Galileo between Copernicus and Newton among the founders of modem astronomy and of a new conception of the universe. 'The New Astronomy' is perhaps his most important book . . . Compelled as a Protestant to give up his post as a teacher of mathematics at Graz, he joined Tycho Brahe, the famous Danish astronomer, at Prague and on his death became mathematician to the Emperor Rudolf II, a great patron of science. It was fortunate that Kepler was able to use the mass of material collected by Tycho Brahe. Brahe had greatly improved the construction of astronomical instruments and with these had made systematic and accurate observations. . . Visit our website for further reading and additional images!.

Hardcover. Etat : Very Good. Five volumes. Folio (20 7/8" x 14 1/8"). Decorative stenciled title-page "Atlas Universalis" in each volume, printed in red and black, and dated 1760, with mss index on verso, vignette title-page for "Grosser Atlas uber die gantze Welt," additional hand-coloured engraved allegorical title-page for "Atlas Novus", fine uncoloured engraved portrait of Homann by Winter, 129 double-page and one full-page town plans, and 320 double-page maps and plates, one double-page leaf with four vignette maps of the continents, by Homann, Lotter, and de Fer, all with original hand-color in full or in part, and with slightly later hand-colour in outline, the majority laid down in full or part at the time of publication, extra-illustrated with double-page world maps by Bellin, 1748 and Lotter, 1778, and four vignette maps of Gibraltar laid-down on the verso of the town plan (small repair to lower corner of map of France, map of Burgundy with small burn affecting the image). Contemporary full mottled calf, the spines gilt in 9 compartments, red morocco lettering-piece in one, gilt-lettered in two (some minor wear to corners, a bit rubbed). With the ink signature "Exchaquet" in an early hand at the head of the title-page in volume one, and the stenciled initials of "F.P.S." at the foot of each title-page. A composite atlas, with 130 town plans and 27 maps and plans of American cities (vol. V). The maps of America importantly include de Fer's map of California dated 1722, Lotter's map of the British colonies dated 1777, as well as his beautiful map of Philadelphia (a complete list is available upon request). The first volume begins with Johann Gabriel Doppelmayr's impressions of Homann's celestial charts as "Atlas Novus Coelestis", Nuremberg: Homann, 1742, with 36 fine engraved double-page maps and plates with original hand-colour in part. The volume continues with maps of Portugal, Spain, France, Great Britain and Belgium and includes magnificent town plans of Lisbon, Madrid, Gibraltar, Barcelona, Paris, Strasbourg, London, Amsterdam, the Hague, Rotterdam, Brussels, D'Anvers, Maastricht, and Luxembourg. Volumes II and III contains the German Empire, including Austria, Bavaria, the old provinces of Franconie and, Souabe, and the Rhine, Westphalia, Saxony, and Switzerland and includes amongst others the town plans of Vienna, Regensburg, Munich, Salzburg, Nuremberg, Augsburg, Stuttgart, Ulm, Frankfurt, Dresden, Leipzig, Hanover, and Hamburg. Volume IV has maps of Italy, Hungary, Bohemia, Silesia (11 double-pages of views), and Poland, and includes town plans of Turin, Milan, Mantua, Parma, Rome, Florence, Venice, Genoa, Naples, Belgrade, Prague, Danzig, Berlin, and Stettin. Volume V has maps of Scandinavia, Russia, Greece, Asia, Africa, and America, and includes town plans of Bratislava, Stockholm, Copenhagen, St. Petersburg, Constantinople, and the cities of Batavia, Jerusalem, Bengal, Oran, Algiers, Porto Belo, Lotter's Plan of Philadelphia, maps of Halifax and Quebec. Homann is arguably the most important figure in German cartographical history. This atlas, is a testament to the creativity and cartographical skill that earned Homann such prestige within European map-making circles. Homann's prolific map and atlas production made an invaluable contribution to German regional cartography and had a profound impact on European map publishing in the eighteenth century. Founded in the year 1702, Homann's printing house became so successful that it was credited with the revival of the German printing industry, after what had been a long period of domination by the Dutch. Homann became a member of the Berlin Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1707, and shortly after publishing this edition of the atlas, Homann in 1715 was appointed Geographer to the Emperor. The set was owned by Charles-François Exchaquet, the Swiss cartographer and mapmaker, distinguished for his work in the Alps generally and Mont-Blanc in particular.

No Binding. Etat : Very Good. 1st Edition. THE EARLIEST OBTAINABLE DEPICTION OF THE NEW WORLD. [Rome: Bernardinus Venetus de Vitalibus, 1508.] First edition, Shirley state 5/McGuirk 3-C. Two sheets joined (sheet: 17 7/16" x 22 3/4", 443mm x 578mm; framed: 35 9/16" x 30"). Engraved conical-projection map. Float-matted with a window verso, demonstrating water-marks (crossed arrows). Trimmed at the edges, with about an inch added and loss supplied in facsimile. Some losses at the join, filled in facsimile. A little toning in patches. As exploration pushed European knowledge of the world east and south, cartographers built on the framework of Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaeus), a second-century philosopher living in Roman Alexandria in Egypt. In the Greek tradition (Ptolemy wrote in Greek, which was the administrative language of the Roman Empire in the Eastern Mediterranean), philosophy -- the love of wisdom -- bridged what we now divide into the humanities and the sciences; he was a mathematician, natural scientist and geographer-astronomer. No manuscripts of the Geographika Hyphegesis (Geographical Guidance) survive from before the XIIIc, but some XIIIc examples survive with maps that bear some relation to those Ptolemy himself drew. Thus, with the exception of some excavated carved maps, Ptolemy is the source for ancient cartography as well as its culmination. The discovery of the New World in the late XVc -- Columbus assumed he had found the East Indies because of Ptolemy's calculations and assertions about longitude -- provoked a crisis in the understanding of the disposition of the globe; the Ptolemeian skeleton was showing signs of fracture. It is against this background that Johannes Ruysch (Johan(n) Ruijsch, ca. 1460-1533) made his coniform (cone or fan-shaped) projection. Ruysch was a profoundly cosmopolitan figure; he was Flemish or German or Netherlandish by birth, lived in Cologne, Rome, England and finally Portugal. From England, it is claimed, he himself sailed west as far as the American coast; thus he is the first mapmaker to have traveled to America. Due, perhaps, to his first-hand knowledge of the contradictions entailed by a New World adjoining Ptolemy's, Ruysch was visionary in his solutions. (The title translates to "a more universal illustration of the known world made out of new observations;" the comparative makes clear Ruysch's competitiveness.) Newfoundland adjoins Tibet. Japan (Zipangu) is identified with Spagnola (modern Haiti and the Dominican Republic), although Ruysch is fairly agnostic in his reasoning. In other ways, however, his map is cutting-edge in its modelling of Asia --here the triangular form of India appears for the first time -- and the Caribbean, largely drawing on Portuguese sources. The map's date is sometimes given as 1507, and indeed it does appear in some examples of the 1507 Rome edition of Ptolemy (colophon 8 September 1507); the vast majority, however, appear in 1508 editions, which have the addition of a commentary of Marcus of Benevento (Marcus Beneventanus) based on the findings depicted in this map. The tacit suggestion of most bibliographies is that the map was not completed until very late 1507 or early 1508, and its inclusion in 1507 editions is the work of owners rather than the publisher. Although the 1506 map of Contarini/Rosselli and the 1507 Waldseemüller are earlier (excluding manuscript maps), each survives in a single example. The Ruysch map is thus the earliest obtainable depiction of the New World. McGuirk's 1989 census counted 64 examples, of which 14 were in private collections (plus one on the market in 1986). The present example was purchased from a private collector in 2008. McGuirk, Donald L. "Ruysch World Map: Census and Commentary." Imago Mundi 41 (1989) 133-141. Peerlings, R.H.J., F. Laurentius and J. van den Bovenkamp. "The Watermarks in the Rome Editions of Ptolemy's Cosmography and More." Quaerendo 47 (2017) 307-327. Burden 3 (p. xxiii); Harrisse 56; Sabin 66476 (Ptolemy); Shirley.

First edition. DIBNER 170: FIRST VERNACULAR EDITION - A SUPERB COPY. First edition in the vernacular, and a superb large copy untouched in its first binding, of one of the finest illustrated books of the Italian Renaissance. "This handbook on classical architecture is the only Roman work inspired by Greek architecture that has come down to us. It is therefore important as a prime source of many lost Greek writings on the subject and as a guide to archaeological research in Italy and Greece. By exemplifying the principles of classical architecture it became the fundamental architectural textbook for centuries. Vitruvius, who lived during the time of Julius Caesar and Augustus, and probably composed his book prior to 27 BC, was basically a theoretical rather than a practising architect and his only known work is the Basilica at Fano. The 10 books of 'On architecture' deal with principles of building in general, building materials, designs of theatres, temples, and other public buildings, town and country houses, baths, interior decoration and wall paintings, clocks and dials, astronomy, mechanical and military engineering. There are many ingenious devices for dealing with the echo in theatres and ideas on acoustic principles generally; on methods of sanitation - Vitruvius is believed to have been responsible for the new plumbing system introduced when Augustus rebuilt Rome; on correct proportions, proper location of building, town planning, and much on ballistic and hydraulic problems. The classical tradition of building, with its regular proportion and symmetry and the three orders - Doric, Ionic and Corinthian - derives from this book. In recent times Vitruvius's considerable importance in the history of science has also been recognised as he made some valuable contributions to astronomy, geometry, and engineering. Although his influence on practical architecture during the Middle Ages was obviously small, at least 55 manuscripts of the De Architectura are known . It was with the Renaissance that his influence began. Alberti, Bramante, Ghiberti, Michelangelo, Vignola, Palladio and many others were directly inspired by Vitruvius. The first printed edition appeared in Rome (ca. 1483-90), the first illustrated one in Venice, 1511, and French, German, Italian and Spanish translations soon followed, The Como edition of 1521 is the first in Italian - by Cesare Cesariano (1483-1543), a pupil of Bramante. It has splendid new illustrations, some of which are now attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, and is the most beautiful of all the early editions" (PMM). The text by Vitruvius, in the translation by B. Mauro da Bergamo and B. Jovio da Camasco, occupies the center of the page in large letters; Caesarino's commentaries, which stop at chapter VI, are printed around it, in a smaller type. The 117 woodcuts, which form the iconography, mark, according to Roland Recht, an essential moment in Western architecture. Printed alternately on a black and white background, these woodcuts are considered as models of their kind; they were executed according to the designs of Caesarino, Massimo Bono Mauro da Bergamo and Benedetto Giovio (1471-1545). The publication of this work was initiated by Cesariano with the financial support of two sponsors, Augustino Gallo and Aloysio Pirovano, and was to have been carried out in Milan, but the arrival of the French in this city resulted in the work being printed in Como; Gottardo da Ponte was brought specially to Como to carry out the printing, which may have been a print-run of 1300 copies. As recorded in the concluding editors' address to the reader, Cesariano abruptly abandoned the project after quarreling with Gallo and Pirovano in May 1521; his commentary ends at Chapter 6 of Book IX, and the remainder was completed by Giovio and Mauro. The present copy is in the first state, with the error 'tuta lopera' uncorrected in the heading on f. Z8r. Provenance: Christoph Andreas IV. Imhoff (1734-1807), numismatist (ex-libris); Alfred Ritter von Pfeiffer (Cat. I, Leipzig, 4-6 May 1914, No 696, "magnificent copy of Vitruvius, whose well-preserved specimens are the greatest scarcity"), with his 19th century armorial bookplate and what could be his shelfmark accompanied by a crowned label [AP]; Pierre Berès (1913-2008) (Cat. IV, Cabinet books, 2006, No. 7), described as "the king of French booksellers" in his New York Times obituary and as "a legendary figure in the world of art, collecting and publishing" by French culture minister Christine Albanel; Alde, March 6, 2014, lot 6 (â 158,600). "The known facts of Vitruvius' career are that he worked in some unspecified capacity for Julius Caesar; that he was subsequently entrusted with the maintenance of siege engines and artillery by Caesar's grandnephew and adopted heir, Octavianus, later the Emperor Augustus; and that on retirement from this post he came under the patronage of Augustus' sister, Octavia (I, praef., 2). It is often suggested, on the evidence of Frontinus (De aquis urbis Romae, 25), that book VIII of De architectura may have been the fruit of personal experience as a hydraulic engineer during Agrippa's construction of the Aqua Julia in 33 B.C.; but Frontinus is in fact quoting Agrippa and Vitruvius as possible alternative sources for his information, and the relevant passages in Vitruvius contain some surprising technical errors. Vitruvius' only excursion into civil architecture was the building of a basilica at Fanum Fortunae, the modern Fano, on the Adriatic Coast (V, 1, 6-10). This commission, coupled with what appears to be a personal knowledge of many of the Roman cities in the Po valley (for instance, I, 4, 11; II, 9, 16; V, 1, 4), suggests that, like many of those prominent in the culture of Augustan Rome, Vitruvius may have been of north Italian origin. It should be noted that in the first century of the Christian era, a freedman of the same family, Lucius Vitruvius Cerdo, is named as architect of the Arch of the Gavii at V.

Folio (242 x 340 mm). Latin manuscript on paper. 160 leaves (complete including four blank leaves at the beginning and six at the end). Written in brown ink in a neat humanistic hand, double columns, 37 lines to each page, numerous two and three line initials supplied in red or blue. With one large illuminated initial and coat of arms of the Scalamonte family flanked by floral decoration on first leaf, painted in shades of blue, green and lilac and heightened in burnished gold. With altogether 231 full-page tables in red and brown, some marginal or inter-columnar annotations, and one extended annotation on final leaf. Fifteenth century blind stamped goat skin over wooden boards, remains of clasps. The so-called "Toledan Tables" are astronomical tables used to predict the movements of the Sun, Moon and planets relative to the fixed stars. They were completed around the year 1080 at Toledo by a group of Arab astronomers, led by the mathematician and astronomer Al-Zarqali (known to the Western World as Arzachel), and were first updated in the 1270s, afterwards to be referred to as the "Alfonsine Tables of Toledo". Named after their sponsor King Alfonso X, it "is not surprising that" these tables "originated in Castile because Christians in the 13th century had easiest access there to the Arabic scientific material that had reached its highest scientific level in Muslim Spain or al-Andalus in the 11th century" (Goldstein 2003, 1). The Toledan Tables were undoubtedly the most widely used astronomical tables in medieval Latin astronomy, but it was Giovanni Bianchini whose rigorous mathematical approach made them available in a form that could finally be used by early modern astronomy. - Bianchini was in fact "the first mathematician in the West to use purely decimal tables" and decimal fractions (Feingold, 20) by applying with precision the tenth-century discoveries of the Arab mathematician Abu'l-Hasan al-Uqilidisi, which had been further developed in the Islamic world through the writings of Al-Kashi and others (cf. Rashed, 88 and 128ff.). Despite the fact that they had been widely discussed and applied in the Arab world throughout a period of five centuries, decimal fractions had never been used in the West until Bianchini availed himself of them for his trigonometric tables in the "Tabulae de motis planetarum". It is this very work in which he set out to achieve a correction of the Alfonsine Tables by those of Ptolemy. "Thorndike observes that historically, many have erred by neglecting, because of their difficulty, the Alfonsine Tables for longitude and the Ptolemaic for finding the latitude of the planets. Accordingly, in his Tables Bianchini has combined the conclusions, roots and movements of the planets by longitude of the Alfonsine Tables with the Ptolemaic for latitude" (Tomash, 141). - The importance of the present work, today regarded as representative of the scientific revolutions in practical mathematics and astronomy on the eve of the Age of Discovery, is underlined by the fact that it was not merely dedicated but also physically presented by the author to the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in person on the occasion of Frederick's visit to Ferrara. In return for his "Tabulae", a "book of practical astronomy, containing numbers representing predicted times and positions to be used by the emperor's [ ] astrologers in managing the future" (Westman, 10ff.), Bianchini was granted a title of nobility by the sovereign. - For Regiomontanus, who studied under Bianchini together with Peurbach, the author of the "Tabulae" counted as the greatest astronomer of all time, and to this day Bianchini's work is considered "the largest set of astronomical tables produced in the West before modern times" (Chabbas 2009, VIII). Even Copernicus, a century later, still depended on the "Tabulae" for planetary latitude (cf. Goldstein 2003, 573), which led to Al-Zarquali's Tables - transmitted in Bianchini's adaption - ultimately playing a part in one of the greatest revolutions in the history of science: the 16th century shift from geocentrism to the heliocentric model. - In the year 1495, some 20 years after our manuscript was written, Bianchini's Tables were printed for the first time, followed by editions in 1526 and 1563. Apart from these printed versions, quite a few manuscript copies of his work are known in western libraries - often comprising only the 231 full-page Tables but omitting the 68-page introductory matter explaining how they were calculated and meant to be used, which is present in our manuscript. Among the known manuscripts in public collections is one copied by Regiomontanus, and another written entirely in Copernicus's hand (underlining the significance of the Tables for the scientific revolution indicated above), but surprisingly not one has survived outside Europe. Indeed, the only U.S. copy recorded by Faye (cf. below) was the present manuscript, then in the collection of Robert Honeyman. There was not then, nor is there now, any copy of this manuscript in an American institution. Together with one other specimen in the Erwin Tomash Library, our manuscript is the only preserved manuscript witness for this "crucial text in the history of science" (Goldstein 2003, publisher's blurb) in private hands. Apart from these two examples, no manuscript version of Bianchini's "Tabulae" has ever shown up in the trade or at auctions (according to a census based on all accessible sources). - Condition: watermarks identifiable as Briquet 3387 (ecclesiastical hat, attested in Florence 1465) and 2667 (Basilisk, attested to Ferrara and Mantua 1447/1450). Early manuscript astronomical table for the year 1490 mounted onto lower pastedown. Minor waterstaining in initial leaves and a little worming at back, but generally clean and in a fine state of preservation. Italian binding sympathetically rebacked, edges of covers worn to wooden boards. A precious manuscript, complete and well preserved in its.

Etat : Fine. First edition. STUNNING LARGE HISTORIC PHOTOGRAPH OF TESLA, SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY TESLA TO EDWARD EVERETT BARLETT. Albumen print, signed and inscribed by Tesla on the original gray mount: "To my friend E. E. Bartlett, New York, June 9, 1896, Nikola Tesla." The photograph shows Tesla in profile seated before the spiral coil of his high-voltage transformer at his East Houston St., New York, laboratory. The photograph, in addition to being arguably the most famous and dramatic portrait of Tesla, is scientifically significant, for it served as a demonstration of the power of his new technique of providing illumination with vacuum tubes. A reproduction of the photograph appeared in the May 20, 1896 issue of Electrical Review, alongside an article where a reporter interviewed Tesla about the novel circumstances of the creation of this photo: "As to his continuous efforts to improve his system of lighting by vacuum tubes, with which he has been identified during a number of years, Tesla said that he has been more successful than he had ever dared to hope. His methods of conversion from ordinary to high-frequency currents are rendered simple in the extreme, the devices are thoroughly reliable and require no attention. Last, but most important of all, he has succeeded in increasing the candle-power of the tubes to practically any intensity desired. "A remarkable and most telling result of the advances he has made in the last direction is a portrait, which he has reluctantly allowed us to use, and which was obtained by two seconds' exposure to the light of a single vacuum tube of small dimensions. Tesla stated further that photographs obtained by the light of such powerful tubes show an amount of detail which no picture taken by the sun or flash light is capable of disclosing. This feature is only faintly shown in the reproduction on this page. The photograph was made by Tonnelé & Company, artists' photographers, who aided Mr. Tesla in his attempts to photograph by the light of phosphorescent tubes about two years ago. "When asked, Mr. Tesla said, in explanation of the picture, speaking with deep feeling, that the volume he was reading was one of the 'Scientific Papers,' of Maxwell, given to him as a token of friendship by Professor Dewar; the chair a gift of his warmest friend, Mr. E. D. Adams; and as to the queer coil to his left, Mr. Tesla hesitatingly remarked that it was the object 'dearest of all in his laboratory,' having been a most valuable instrument in his many-sided investigations. "Mr. Tesla added, good humoredly, that, had it not been for the extraordinary manner in which the photograph was taken, he would not have given this explanation even to such an important personage as the representative of the ELECTRICAL REVIEW." Tesla was correct in insisting that the lighting from the vacuum tubes produced a high-level of detail in the photograph; the intricacies of the coil, in particular, appear remarkably sharp. Overall, the photograph has an orange tint, almost certainly the result of his novel lighting technique. Although this is the only signed example of this photograph we are aware of, it has been reproduced in recent years many times, including serving as the cover image for Marc J. Seifer's groundbreaking biography of Tesla, Wizard. Provenance: The recipient, Edward Everett Bartlett (1863-1942) was a celebrated New Yorker (both he and Tesla were featured in Moses King's Notable New Yorkers, 1896-1899), who founded Bartlett & Co., (later Bartlett Orr Press) on lower Broadway, in 1888. Variously described as an artist, illustrator, printer, and engraver, Bartlett was internationally known as "an expert on newspaper type, and he was credited with the development of much of the linotype type used in newspaper offices throughout the country"; additionally he published several works on the art of the book. (New York Times, Obituary, 1942). Size: Image, 7 3/4 x 9 1/2 inches; with mount, 8.5 x 11 inches. Archival matting and framed with UV-.

Hardcover. Etat : Very Good. March 24, 1490. Chancery 4to (228 x 177 mm). 442 (of 442) unnumbered leaves including initial blank a1. Signatures: (a-p)8 q10 (t-z)8 [et]8 [con]8 [rum]8 (A-N)8 (O-P)6 (Q-Z)8 (aa-bb)8 cc10 (dd-gg)8 hh10 (a1 blank). Text in double columns, 60 lines, types 2:130G, 3:62G, 4:92G. Title from incipit of Book 1. Colophon reads: Regis aboali hassem filii hali abinsceni liber tot[ius] finitus est vna cum tractatu de viribus cordis translato ab Arnaldo de vilanoua. Impressus [et] diligentissime correctus ma[n]dato et impensis nobilis viri Octauiani Scoti ciuis modoetiensis. Uenetiis. Anno salutis. M. CCCCXC. die. 24. Martij. Contains Avicenna's De viribus cordis (leaves 2g5v-2h4r), translated by Arnaldus de Villanova. Incipit reads: Libellus Auicen[n]e de virib[us] cordis translat[us] ab Arnaldo de villa noua barchinone feliciter i[n]cipit. Rubricated throughout with 3- to 6-line capitals opening paragraphs painted in red or blue, mostly alternating, 7-line capitals opening books and 4-line capitals opening chapters interlaced in red and blue, paragraph marks in red or blue, yellow strokes to sentence initials. Original French Renaissance binding (about 1550), calf over thick boards, spine with 5 raised bands, blind ruling to boards and spine, gilt single stamps (pine cone) to spine compartments, boards with large central gilt arabesque and fleur-de-lis stamp in each corner (spine ends and corners repaired, boards rubbed, soiled and with old burn spots, extremities worn). Text with very little even browning throughout, faint damp-staining to margins of first and final few pages, occasional minor spotting and soiling, ink annotations in contemporary hands throughout, a few pages extensively and narrow-spaced, upper margin trimmed closely towards end of book with headline slightly shaved on 4 pages, 3 leaves (dd3-5) with larger brown-stain, portion of torn publisher's device above colophon on final leaf restored. Provenance: Monsieur Domille (inscription on first flyleaf), medical doctor and politician Jean-Claude Lemoine, Tessy-sur-Vire, Manche (ink stamp on second flyleaf), extensive comments in French in three different hands on first flyleaf. ---- Exceptional copy of the Canon, rarely ever found with the entire text of all five books present and complete as here. William Osler described the Canon as "the most famous medical textbook ever written," noting that it remained "a medical bible for a longer time than any other work." (Osler, p. 71). It "stands for the epitome of all precedent development, the final codification of all Graeco-Arabic medicine" (Max Neuburger, p. 368). The earliest (dated) printed edition of the Latin Canon appeared in 1472, but only covering book 3. Whereas several incunabula copies of the Canon are recorded in public libraries around the world - 48 of the editio princeps (Strasburg, before 1473) and 35 copies of the Scotus 1490 edition with 8 located in the US - they are exceptionally rare in the trade with only a handful recorded at auction in the past 50+ years and no complete copy of the Scotus edition traced at all. The most common on the market is the Hebrew edition published in Naples in 1491 and the Lyon edition of 1498 (with 90 copies in public libraries). GW lists 15 editions printed before 1501 alone with 12 copies in US libraries. Ibn Sina (c.980-1037), also known in the Western world as Avicenna, was an Arabian philosopher, physician, poet, courtier and politician. He had "perhaps a wider influence in the eastern and western hemispheres than any other Islamic thinker. He lived mainly in Persia but wrote mostly in Arabic, though a few of his works were written in Persi. . ." References: Dibner 120 (this edition), PMM 11 and Horblit 7 (for 1st ed); Klebs 131.11; ISTC ia01424000; BMC V 438; Heirs of Hippocrates 67 (for 1498 edition); W.Osler, The Evolution of Modern Medicine, 2004; M. Neuburger, History of medicine, vol. 1. - Visit our website for additional images and information!.

Octavo. Collation complete: I. Euricius Cordus - Botanologicon: Title with the woodcut device of Cologne-printer Johann Gymnicus, including his Motto, the first line of a Verse from the Aeneid by Virgil 'Discite Iustitiam Moniti', 183, [21] pp., 2 blank leaves. The titlepage of the Botanologicon bears the manuscript ownership-entry of Nuremberg's Astronomer, Philosopher and Mathematician Hieronymus Schreiber [also called Jerôme Schreiber], student-friend of Euricius Cordus' son Valerius Cordus in Wittenberg and later trustee of Valerius Cordus' scholarly estate after Valerius Cordus' premature death in Rome. Dated in the same hand on the titlepage also the entry 'Anno 1539', when Valerius Cordus matriculated at Wittenberg and Schreiber already had studied there since May 1532. With several contemporary manuscript annotations throughout both titles (the Botanologicon and Examen) / II. A. M. Brasavola - Examen omnium simplicium medicamentorum: Title, [1], ['Reverendissimo to Ioannes Argenterius', 4 pp.], ['Ad Illustris & Sereniss. ('Epistola Nuncupatoria') to the Duces of Ferrara' 17 pp.], [Epigramma, 1 p.], [Examen & Aristotelis Problemata 542 pages, [Dedication to Franciscus Frellaeus, 2 pp.], [Index copiosissimus in Examen Omnium, 13 pp.], [1]. With several manuscript annotations. Original, contemporary blind-stamped pigskin over wooden boards with some stronger signs of running to the corners, with partially bevelled edges and both of the original metal clasps intact. Very good condition with only minor signs of external wear. Title in ink to upper spine and also to top of fore-edge. Very few pressed plants loosely inserted. Interior in excellent condition with some minor staining to very few pages only. The Hieronymus Schreiber provenance is a stunning discovery. A more detailed in-depth-publication regarding this item is necessary and already in preparation, with a plethora of comparative sources; taken into account historical and recent publications. Hieronymus Schreiber is a cipher, yet still so much is already known about him that amazes. He is not only most famous for being the recipient of one of the first editions of Nicolaus Copernicus' - De Revolutionibus, fresh from the printing press by Johannes Petreius. But furthermore, a manuscript annotation in Schreiber's copy of Copernicus masterpiece was later discovered by Kepler to clarify the Preface of Copernicus' work had been hijacked by Andreas Osiander. Manuscript annotations throughout the Botanologicon reference the genus Cuscuta in Brasavola's Examen. This is an important discovery because it supports Hieronymus Schreiber's ownership / Schreiber suffered knowingly from chronic liver-problems and famously, prior to the fateful trip to Italy with Valerius Cordus, he went to Aachen to cure and seek relief from this very issue. Cuscuta was not only in TCM, but also generally, known during the Renaissance as remedy for liver-issues. Schreiber's time in Aachen is recorded in correspondence between Philip Melanchthon and Hieronymus Schreiber [see Corpus Reformatorum] and correspondence between Philip Melanchthon and Joachim Camerarius even proves Hieronymus Schreiber living with Melanchthon in Wittenberg, where a regular study-group would certainly have included Valerius Cordus [letter mentioned in Corpus Reformatorum - Volume V]. About the importance of especially this Sammelband of Euricius Cordus' Botanologicon and Antonio Musa Brasavola's Examen omnium simplicium medicamentorum': Some of the Annotations in the Examen reference the Botanologicon; especially on page 502 of the Examen in which Brasavola denies previous knowledge of the Botanologicon when writing his work. Edward Lee Greene (and Frank N. Egerton, ed.) already found page 502 of Brasavola's Examen important enough to illustrate the undeniable connection of 'Botanologicon' and 'Examen' by including a full translation from latin of the long passage of Brasavola's denial (see Volume II, p.696/697 of 'Landmarks of Botanical History'). Even though many modern scholarly criticism identifies and recognizes the Botanologicon of Euricius Cordus as the 'first attempt at the scientific systematization of plants' (D.S.B. III, pp. 412-13), and Lynn Thorndike devotes an entire chapter on Brasavola and his pharmaceutical writings, the most significant and informed hypothesis on the reciprocal influence between Euricius Cordus' Botanologicon and Brasavola's Examen is the lengthy essay of Edward Lee Greene's chapter on Pharmacology in his 'Landmarks of Botanical History' (Volume II, p.690-701). What makes Lee's essay so different, is his theory of the genesis of both works, his speculation on the possible plagiarization by Brasavola and the immediate absolution he grants Brasavola due to Brasavola being in danger of dying a heretic if he would have openly admitted and endorsed the work of Euricius Cordus, an open supporter of the Reformation. It is highly likely that Schreiber has received the work from his new friend Valerius Cordus. It is important to understand that medicinal plants (Simples / Medicamenta Simplicia) were the main interest in Valerius Cordus' studies (see p.292 of Ersch and Gruber's 1829 published 'Encyclopedia of Science and Art'). This would explain the two volumes being bound together since Brasavola's Examen is the first monumental publication on simples, and Valerius Cordus probably knew that his father Euricius Cordus and Antonio Musa Brasavola shared the same teacher in Ferrara, italian humanist and physician Niccolò Leoniceno. While (after we consulted a specialist in paleography), it is more likely that an undecipherable note on the titlepage of the 'Botanologicon' (below Schreiber's name) reads as an abbreviation of "at Wittenberg": 'a Wbrg anno 1539', it might as well read as 'a Valery' [from Valerius]. The manuscript notes identify annotations from someone connecting the dots between both works. But while it must not be doubted that this is Hieronymus.

Hardcover. First edition. "OUT OF NOTHING I HAVE CREATED A STRANGE NEW UNIVERSE" BOLYAI'S INVENTION OF NON-EUCLIDEAN GEOMETRY THE ONLY 'MAXIMALLY COMPLETE' COPY IN PRIVATE HANDS. First edition, the finest and most complete copy ever likely to come to the market, of "the most extraordinary two dozen pages in the history of thought" (Halsted), containing the independent foundation (along with the work of Lobachevsky) of non-Euclidean geometry. This work is one of the few absolute rarities among the classics of science: in his recently published census, Lemley locates 25 surviving copies, including this one (no. 21 in the census). Our copy is in the most complete state (1H, 2C in Lemley's classification). Only two other copies in this state are known, both in institutional collections (Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig and the Bibliothèque universitaire des Sciences et Techniques in Bordeaux). There are only two copies in auctions records: the Norman copy (no. 2, Sotheby's NY, 1998, $98,000), in original binding but not the most complete state; and no. 5 (Sotheby's Paris, 2011, â 120,750), in contemporary marbled boards, again not in the most complete state. "Despite its brevity and relative obscurity, János Bolyai's twenty-six-page Appendix was epoch-making in the history of mathematics. In it, Bolyai (1802-60) created a non-Euclidean system of geometry by challenging Euclid's fifth postulate, otherwise known as the axiom of parallelism. While its reception was initially muted, János's work would ultimately provide the mathematical basis for Einstein's special theory of relativity, developed be- tween 1905 and 1915" (Lemley, pp. 196-197). Nikolai Lobachevsky (1792-1856) and János Bolyai had independently created non-Euclidean systems by challenging the 'parallel postulate' of Euclid. It has been a matter of debate for centuries whether this postulate - that through any point not on a given straight line exactly one line can be drawn that does not intersect the given line - can be deduced from the other postulates of Euclidean geometry. "János began work on his new geometry in 1820 at the age of eighteen, though his father, Farkas Bolyai, attempted to dissuade him from disproving Euclid's fifth postulate . After his son's unanticipated success, however, Farkas Bolyai published János's treatise as an appendix to the first volume of his mathematics textbook titled, Tentamen Juventutem Studiosam. Published in this form-as a postscript to a small edition printed by an unknown Hungarian college in a provincial town in Transylvania-the work was almost guaranteed obscurity" (Lemley, p. 197). A copy of the Appendix was sent to Gauss shorty after publication. 'Gauss was impressed, writing to Gerling on 14 February 1832 that "I consider this young geometer von Bolyai to be a genius of the first order"' (Gray, p. 125). However, "Gauss responded in a letter [to Farkas] dated 6 March 1832: 'If I commenced by saying that I am unable to praise this work, you would certainly be surprised for a moment. But I cannot say otherwise. To praise it would be to praise myself.' Gauss's dismissive assertion of priority disheartened János and effectively ended the young geometer's career in mathematics. And while Farkas viewed Gauss's letter as transparent praise from a master mathematician, János doubted Gauss's claim of priority and suspected his father of sharing his work prior to its publication. In the years following its publication, Bolyai's Appendix remained an obscure masterpiece. However, interest in non-Euclidean geometry was revived gradually in the decades before Einstein's theory of special relativity, and since then the Appendix has been rightly viewed as transformative in the history of mathematics" (Lemley, pp. 197-198). Farkas Bolyai was a close friend of Gauss and regarded by the latter as the only man who fully understood Gauss's metaphysics of mathematics. "He can be taken as a precursor of Gottlob Frege, Pasch, and Georg Cantor; but, as with many pioneers, he did not enjoy the credit that accrued to those that followed him" (DSB). He had worked on the parallel postulate and the possibilities of a non-Euclidean geometry from his earliest days as a mathematician in Göttingen, and had corresponded with Gauss on the subject, even sending him a manuscript entitled Theoria parallelarum, but it was his son János who was to achieve the breakthrough. Provenance: stamp of the publisher, press of the Reformed College, Maros Vásárhely (now the Romanian city of Târgu Mures) on free flyleaf and title of first volume. In about 300 BC Euclid wrote the Elements, a book which "has exercised an influence upon the human mind greater than that of any other work except the Bible" (DSB). Euclid stated five postulates from which he deduced all of the theorems and propositions in his work: To draw a straight line from any point to any other. To produce a finite straight line continuously in a straight line. To describe a circle with any centre and distance. That all right angles are equal to each other. That, if a straight line falling on two straight lines make the interior angles on the same side less than two right angles, if produced indefinitely, meet on that side on which are the angles less than the two right angles. Euclid was dissatisfied with the fifth postulate and he tried to avoid its use as long as possible - in fact the first 28 propositions of The Elements are proved without using it. In his commentary on the Elements, Proclus (410-485) noted several incorrect attempts to deduce the fifth postulate from the other four, including one by Ptolemy, and gave a false proof of his own. However, his work was important for stating the following postulate, which is equivalent to the fifth postulate (in the presence of the other postulates): Given a line and a point not on the line, it is possible to draw exactly one line through the given point parallel to the line. This became known as 'Playfair's Axiom' after John Playfair wrote a famous c.

Hardcover. Etat : Good. 13 volumes, fol.: 1): pp. [4], 893, [57], without final blank; 2): pp. [6], 862, [62], without final blank; 3): pp. [10], 560, [24]; 4): pp. [10], 767, [45]; 5): pp. [6], 593, [29]; 6): pp. [6], 732, [28], without final blank; 7): pp. [6], 495, [29]; 8): pp. [6], 1040, [12]; 9): pp. [4], 718, [16]; 10): FIRST EDITION: pp. [6], 427, [29]; 11): FIRST EDITION: pp. [8], 748, [28], 159, [9], without final blank; 12): FIRST EDITION: pp. [8], 979, [13]; 13): FIRST EDITION, second issue: pp. [12], 660, [52]. Predominantly Roman letter, little Italic and Greek; engraved architectural and allegorical titles by G. B. Coriolano, G. B. Cavazza, A. Salmicius and L. Tinti, all featuring the dedicatees coat of arms and, occasionally, oval portraits; numerous historiated or floriated initials and decorative or typographical head- and tail-pieces, over 2500 woodcut illustrations of animals, plants and gems in text, full- or double-pages; printers device on most final or penultimate leaves; occasionally light foxing, mostly in margins, a few leaves age yellowed; small marginal waterstains in places in vols 4, 6-8, 10 and 13, tiny wormholes at foot of first gathering in vol. 1, couple of ink spots, mainly on blanks, to title of vol. 5, first loosening gatherings in vol. 11, worn lower margin of last three leaves in vol. 13. Fine uniform set of good, well-margined copies in contemporary mottled calf, darker in vol. 13, consistently gilt with double-filled border, spine charmingly gilt with elaborate floriated decoration and title directly lettered on one or two of the seven compartments; a. e. sprinkled; minor old repairs to head and tail of most spines, light scratching and rubbing occasionally on covers, a few tiny wormholes on vol. 12, some corners and edges very slightly bumped; contemporary autograph of Le Vignon inscribed on all titles but in vol. 13, with variant Le Vignon m. Par. in vol. 11; bookcase number 97 in his hand consistently at foot of each front pastedowns, his price note Emputs 220 ff. at head of title in vol. 10. Exquisite complete set, bound in contemporary France, of the massive corpus of Aldrovandi s scientific works, the last four in the first edition, the remainders in the most accurate editions published in Bologna by Ferroni and Tebaldino in the mid-seventeenth century. Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605) is regarded as the father of modern natural history due to his pivotal contribution to zoology, botany and geology. An erudite scholar of wide-ranging interests, he was the first professor of natural science at Bologna university. There, he established a renowned botanical garden and gathered a steady amount of specimens and detailed drawings of faunal and floral rarities in his private museum. Everything was later bequeathed to the City Senate. The majority of his extensive scientific essays was published posthumously by his pupils with the support of the Bolognese Commune. This set embraces all his body of work, comprising: the three famous volumes on birds; the single tomes on insects, crustaceans & shellfish, fish & cetaceans; the ground-breaking investigation of quadrupeds spread over three volumes; the two fascinating works on reptiles (including dragons) and on any sort of monsters; the rare treatise on metals; the late survey on trees. Vol. 5 (De animalibus exanguibus) retains the initial dedication to the Bolognese senators; vol. 11 (Monstruorum Historia) has the Paralipomena, often missing; vol. 13 (Dendrologia) exceptionally bears the frontispiece with the crude printed title. All volumes are extensively illustrated, often providing the first depiction of a rare animal, plant or stone from Africa, Asia and Americas. Amongst the editors of the vast collection was the Scottish scholar Thomas Dampster (1579-1625), at the time professor of humanities at the University of Bologna. This extraordinary set was put together in the 1650s by a wealthy French collector who marked every volumes with the number 97.

Hardback. Etat : Good+. First Edition. 21 vols bound in 20 (9 volumes quarto text, 1 volume elephant folio text [bound with Antiquities vol I], 11 elephant folio plate volumes), the complete set of 894 plates of which 40 are wholly or partly printed in colours and or hand-coloured, and 2 printed in bistre, many double-page, and or, folding, plate DD in Etat Moderne II with fore-margin sometime renewed, scattered light foxing, contemporary calf gilt with marbled paper panels to covers (moiré cloth panels to natural history vols.), text volumes rebacked to style, spine gilt lettered and ruled, 1809-1830. ANTIQUITIES - 5 vols: (I) Engraved frontispiece, map, 99 plates numbered 1-97 (plates 79 and 87 each in two states) + 1 unnumbered plate; Bound with folio text; (II). 92 plates numbered 1-92; (III). 69 plates numbered 1-69 ; (IV). 72 plates numbered 1-72 + 2 plates lettered e & f ; (V). 89 plates numbered 1-89. ETAT MODERNE - 2 vols. (I). Engraved map, 83 plates numbered 1-83; (II). 22plates numbered 84-105 + 31 plates numbered I-XXXI + 11 plates lettered A-K + 9 plates lettered AA-II + 4 plates lettered KK-NN + 9 plates lettered a-i + 1 plate lettered k (JJ and j not used). HISTOIRE NATURELLE - 2 vols bound in 3: (I). 62 plates; (II). 105 plates; (II bis). 77 plates. Amongst the artists who contributed to this section are Barraband, Bessa, Redoute, and Turpin. CARTES GEORAPHIQUE ET TOPOGRAPHIQUE - engraved title & 52 engraved plates. Provenance: Bookplate of Algernon Percy, 4th Duke of Northumberland (1792-1865). Volumes with either the Garter Crest or Ducal bookplate. Percy, the second son of Hugh, the second Duke, was a distinguished naval officer and a man of science and learning, who rose to the rank of Admiral, and was First Lord of the Admiralty in 1852. Percy became Duke of Northumberland in 1847, and a Knight of the Garter in 1852. FIRST EDITION OF ONE OF THE MOST AMBITIOUS SCIENTIFIC, HISTORICAL, ARTISTIC AND PUBLISHING PROJECTS - A COMPLETE SET WITH FINE ENGLISH PROVENANCE. THE FIRST COMPREHENSIVE DESCRIPTION OF ANCIENTAND MODERN EGYPT, THE OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT OF THE SAVANTS WHO ACCOMPANIED NAPOLEON'S EXPEDITION TO EGYPT (1798-1801). THE WORK IS THE GREATEST OF A NUMBER OF OUTSTANDING SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS BY THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT DETAILING THE RESULTSOF EXPLORATION, UNEQUALLEDBY ANY OTHER NATION DURING THE SAME PERIOD. The only flaw in Napoleon s preparations for the invasion of Egypt was a miscalculation when it came to Turkey s reaction to France s unsolicited help in dealing with its mostly unruly vassals, the Mamluks of Egypt. Had it not been for this, Napoleon s plan for following up military conquest by revolutionising the economy and institutions of Egypt might well have created a modern European-style state, controlled by France, at the axis of all the trade routes between Europe, India and the East. Plans to this end involved nearly 500 civilians, the cream of whom were about 150 men drawn from the Institut de France. Once in Egypt their first task was to make a thorough survey of every aspect of the country to assist the planning of its future shape, and this was extended to include Antiquities. The work was co-ordinated by L Institut de l Egypte (later replaced by the Commission des Sciences et Arts d'Egypte), founded in the appropriated house of Hassan Kachef (illustrated in the plates to the Etat Moderne), with Gaspar Monge as president.As early as October 1798 Fourier was entrusted with the task of uniting the reports of the various disciplines with a view to publication. Following the capitulation of the army to Egypt under General Menou (a convert to Islam), the savants returned to France where a commission was set up for the editing and supervision of the work. The first volumes were published by Napoleon s government, and it is a measure of how important this work was considered to be that publication continued following the Bourbon restoration. . never before or since has a study of such scope and thoroughness been accomplished.

[10], 466, [6] ll.The first English edition of Ludovico di Varthema s famous account of his travels to Arabia, Persia and India: a highly important and adventurous narrative, first published in Italian as Itinerario nello Egypto, nella Suria nella Arabia deserta & felice in 1510, here published in English with other accounts of travels in exotic lands. All of the early Italian editions of Varthema's Itinerario, separately published, are extremely rare. Varthema, a gentleman adventurer and soldier from Bologna, left Venice at the end of 1502 for the Middle East. Impressed and fascinated, he describes not only rites and rituals, but also social, geographical, and day-to-day details. "I determined, personally, and with my own eyes", he declares in the prefatory dedication, "to ascertain the situation of places, the qualities of peoples . of Egypt, Syria, Arabia Deserta and Felix, Persia, India, and Ethiopia, remembering well that the testimony of one eye-witness is worth more than ten hear-says.". In 1503 he reached Alexandria, proceeded on an extensive tour of southwest Arabia and sailed from Ormuz to India. There he travelled along the entire coast of India from north to south and up to Bengal, passing the coasts of Malabar and Coromandel. He made stops at Cambay (Khambhat), Chaul, Dabul (Dabhol), Goa, Bijapur, Calicut (Kozhikode), Cochin (Kochi), Mangalore and many further places, even journeying inland into the Vijayanagara Empire: he is one of the first Europeans to describe the Hindu caste system and religion. He purports to have made extensive travels further east, around the Malay peninsula and the Moluccas. Whether this is true remains under debate. His next section about India however is certainly from his own experience. He returned to the great city of Calicut in August 1505, describing it in more detail than any other place in his account. There he took employment as a soldier and trader with the Portuguese and played a key role in the war with the Zamorin of Calicut. The Zamorin planned a naval attack on the Portuguese at Cannanore (Kannur) and when Varthema found out he decided to escape Calicut and inform the viceroy Francisco de Almeida (1450-1510) in Cochin. As a result the Portuguese were victorious in the naval battle with the Zamorin, which Varthema describes at length. Almeida awarded him a knighthood and took him into service in India, where he stayed for a year and a half. He left in 1508 and made his way back to Europe via the Cape of Good Hope. Varthema s account of his travels became a bestseller immediately on its publication in 1510 and was translated into Spanish and Latin before the present publication in English. "Varthema brought into European literature an appreciation of the areas east of India . which it had previously not received from the sea-travelers and which confirmed by firsthand observations many of the statements made earlier by Marco Polo and the writers of antiquity" (Lach, I. i. 166). "Varthema was a real traveller. His reports on the social and political conditions of the various lands he visited are reliable as being gathered from personal contact with places and peoples. His account of the overland trade is of great value in that we are made to see it before it had begun to give way to the all-seas route. He even heard of a southern continent and of a region of intense cold and very short days, being the first European probably after Marco Polo to bring back the rumor of Terra Australis" (Cox I, 260).No separately published English edition of Varthema s extremely important account of his travels appeared until 1863, but it appears for the first time as pp. 354-421 of the present History of travayle in the West and East Indies, one of the first English editions of the significant collection originally compiled by Pietro Martire d Anghiera (Peter Martyr, 1457-1526). The first translation of Martire (1555) covers only decades I-III of his De orbe novo, with some omissions, with additions from other sources, edited and translated by Richard Eden. Under the benefaction of the Earl of Bedford, Richard Willes, a member of the Jesuit Society from 1565 to 1572, expanded Eden s translation for the present edition, including, apart from Varthema s travels, decades I-IV and an abridgement of decades V-VIII of Martire; Frobisher s voyage in search of a Northwest Passage; Sebastian Cabot s voyages to the Arctic for the Moscovy Company; Cortez s conquest of Mexico; Pereira s description of China, 1565; Acosta and Maffei s notices of Japan, 1573; and the first two English voyages to West Africa. It is also the first account in English of Magellan s circumnavigation, as well as the first printed work to advocate the establishment of a British colony in North America. Provenance: Acquired from Quaritch in 1975 by Gregory S. Javitch (1898-1980), a Russian-born, Canadian leader in the land reclamation sector in Ontario. Javitch formed an important collection of 2500 items that he called "Peoples of the New World", encompassing both North and South America, which was acquired by the Bruce Peel Special Collections at the University of Alberta. It was considered the finest such private collection in Canada at the time and formed the cornerstone of the library s special collections. The present volume remained in Javitch s private collection and was acquired directly from his heirs.Washed (but not aggressively and not pressed), minor repairs to the title-page (not affecting the text), retaining some slight discolouration and small stains in a few leaves. Otherwise in very good condition and with large margins.l Howgego M65. Brunet I, 294. OCLC 5296745. LCCN 02-7743. Alden, European Americana 577/2. Church 119. Streeter Sale 24. Arents 23. Borba de Moraes, p. 33. Hill 533. BM-STC 649. Sabin 1562. Cordier, Japonica 71. Field 485. Not in the Atabey or Blackmer collections.

Hardcover. Etat : Very Good. "7 volumes (22 x 14 inches). Folio. 418 hand-colored lithographs, many HEIGHTENED WITH GOLD LEAF AND OTHER IRIDESCENT MINERAL PAINTS, overpainted with transparent oil and varnish colors, after John Gould, H.C. Richter and W. Hart, with a 7th volume including the original blue printed paper wrappers. Contemporary half brown morocco (extremities a little scuffed). Provenance: with the bookplates of Frederick Ducane Godman (1834-1919), the celebrated ornithologist, on the front paste-down of each volume. "bring to light the hidden treasures of the great primeval forests of the New World" (Gould "Preface") First editions of the main title and of the Supplement. Gould maintained an obsessive fascination for Hummingbirds: "These wonderful works of creation my thoughts are often directed to them in the day, and my night dreams have not infrequently carried me to their native forests in the distant country of America" (Gould "Preface"). During his lifetime he identified more than 400 species of Hummingbird, Linneaus, by comparison, having only identified 22. Gould famously exhibited his personal collection (from which the plates in this monograph are drawn) at the Great Exhibition of 1851 in the Zoological Gardens in Regents Park, and one of his revolving displays of these tiny birds with their "jewel-like glittering hues" (Gould "Preface") can be seen currently at the Yale Center for British Art as part of their exhibition "Endless Forms": Charles Darwin and the Natural Sciences. As a result Gould's "masterpiece [is] an incomparable catalogue and compendium of beauties" ("Fine Bird Books"). From the distinguished library of Frederick Ducane Godman, author of "A Monograph of the Petrels" (1907), and "Natural History of the Azores" (1870). Initially employed as a taxidermist [he was known as the 'bird-stuffer'] by the Zoological Society, Gould's fascination with birds from the east began in the "late 1820s [when] a collection of birds from the Himalayan mountains arrived at the Society's museum and Gould conceived the idea of publishing a volume of imperial folio sized hand-coloured lithographs of the eighty species, with figures of a hundred birds (A Century of Birds Hitherto Unfigured from the Himalaya Mountains, 1830-32). Gould's friend and mentor N. A. Vigors supplied the text. Elizabeth Gould made the drawings and transferred them to the large lithographic stones. Having failed to find a publisher, Gould undertook to publish the work himself; it appeared in twenty monthly parts, four plates to a part, and was completed ahead of schedule. "With this volume Gould initiated a format of publishing that he was to continue for the next fifty years, although for future works he was to write his own text. Eventually fifty imperial folio volumes were published on the birds of the world, except Africa, and on the mammals of Australia-he always had a number of works in progress at the same time. Several smaller volumes, the majority not illustrated, were published, and he also presented more than 300 scientific papers. "His hand-coloured lithographic plates, more than 3300 in total, are called 'Gould plates'. Although he did not paint the final illustrations, this description is largely correct: he was the collector (especially in Australia) or purchaser of the specimens, the taxonomist, the publisher, the agent, and the distributor of the parts or volumes. He never claimed he was the artist for these plates, but repeatedly wrote of the 'rough sketches' he made from which, with reference to the specimens, his artists painted the finished drawings. The design and natural arrangement of the birds on the plates was due to the genius of John Gould, and a Gould plate has a distinctive beauty and quality. His wife was his first artist. She was followed by Edward Lear, Henry Constantine Richter, William Matthew Hart, and Joseph Wolf" (Gordon C. Sauer for DNB). Anker 177, 182; Diane Donaldson "Picturing Animals in Britain 1750-1850", pp. 59-60; "Fi.

[10], [8], [11] ll.Magnificent copy of one of the rare 1608 editions, with the German title, English dedication and note to the reader and text in English, French, German and Dutch. Known in English as The exercise of arms, it was written and illustrated by Jacques de Gheyn and quickly became a famous pictorial army manual for use of officers to teach the young recruits how to handle their weapons: the arquebus (part 1), musket (part 2) and pike (part 3).It gives an excellent picture of the successful army of the Dutch Republic after its reform by Prince Maurits, who (re)introduced exercises and discipline. It also immortalizes Prince Maurits as a military thinker and commander of the most disciplined army of his age.The book met immediate success and makes a considerable contribution to our knowledge of military history. Fully coloured copies like the present were produced largely for princes and other important persons and were probably coloured by De Gheyn himself who was certainly responsible for the high standard of the colouring.In the 18th century our copy was owned by and bound for Charles Philippe Theodore Count Palatine de Sulzbach (1724-1799), Duke of Bavaria, Jülich, Kleve and Berg, Prince of Mörs, Count of Veldentz, Lord of Ravenstein and last Margrave of Bergen op Zoom (1733-1794), with his and his wife's coat of arms on each board.The slips on the title-page have browned slightly and there is occasional minor soiling, mostly in the lower right margin, but the book is in very good condition. A magnificently coloured copy of a work of major importance in military history.l Meij, Jacques de Gheyn II als tekenaar, p. 12, nos. 15-20 (pp. 45-47); New Hollstein, The De Geyn Family II, 340-457.