BRONGNIART, Alexandre. Traité élémentaire de minéralogie, avec des applications aux arts. 1807.
BRONGNIART, Alexandre.
Traité élémentaire de minéralogie, avec des applications aux arts.
Paris, Deterville, 1807.
Two 8vo (195x124 mm), xii-564 pages and 4 pages of handwritten tables/ (4)-443-(1) pages and 16 folding plates. Plates 9 and 10 are printed on the same sheet of paper. binding : Contemporary half sheep, gilt flat spine, title and volume number in gilt on lettering-pieces, sprinkled edges. Minor rubbings. Small staining on page 225 and a minor tear without lack on page 337 of volume 2. Lack of few letters in the middle of the text on page 563 on the same volume.
First edition and first book by Brongniart.
Alexandre Brongniart (1770-1847) is a French scientist well-known and recognized for his research in mineralogy. He succeeded René Just Haüy (one of the founders of geometric crystallography), to the chair of mineralogy at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle of Paris.
As soon as it was published, this book became a classic in this field and was as a reference for students.
references: DSB [II, 494 : "a work commissioned as a textbook for his and Haüy's courses at the Faculté des Sciences and the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle. He adopted a simple scheme of classification based mainly on physical properties, but he also made extensive use of Haüy's crystallographic work. Like other mineralogists at this time, he could not easily distinguish some fine-grained rocks from true simple minerals; but he classed clay and basalt, for example, as fausses espèces, recognizing that they were mélangées although they were too fine-grained to be analyzed. He emphasized the importance of studying the modes of occurrence of minerals as well as their properties, but firmly avoided any discussion of their origins as being too speculative. The sole exception to this was a review of divergent opinions on the aqueous or igneous origin of basalt, but even in this he avoided expressing his own opinion" ], Curtis [I, 869].
provenance: A M. Ant.e RUELLE, Payeur du Trésor royal. (bookplate).
Price : 300 €
