Lot 60
Agricola, Georgius
De ortu et causis subterraneorum lib. v.
The Library of James Stirling, Mathematician
Auction: 23 October 2025 from 13:00 GMT
Description
De natura eorum quae effluunt ex terra lib. iiii. De natura fossilium lib. x. De veteribus et novis metallis lib. ii. Bermannus, sive De re metallica Dialogus. Interpretatio Germanica vocum rei metallicae, addito indice foecundissimo. Basel: Froben, 1546. Folio in sixes (30.5 x 19cm), 18th-century British sprinkled calf, dove of peace motifs gilt to spine, text in roman letter, woodcut Froben device to title-page and verso of final leaf, woodcut initials, binding slightly rubbed, spine-label perished, medial blank g6 discarded but retaining medial blank M6 (not mentioned in Adams), occasional faint creasing across lower fore corners, front free endpaper detached, title-page slightly marked, worm-track to lower margins of quires R-S, final leaf (Y8) damp-stained and with small hole affecting one word [Adams A345; Ferguson I p. 9, ‘a very well printed book’; VD16 A 928]
Footnote
First edition, a major contribution to the Scientific Revolution, including the first dedicated treatise on geology in 'De ortu', and ‘the first modern text-book of mineralogy and petrology’ (Ferguson) in ‘De natura fossilium’, together with a new edition of Bermannus, which on first publication in 1530 ‘for the first time gathered together the unsystematic knowledge of the miners’ (ibid.).