La Statique des Vegetaux, et l'Analyse de l'Air. Experiences nouvelles lûes à la Societé Royale...
Ten folding engraved plates. xviii, [8], 408 pp., one leaf of privilege. Large 4to, cont. mottled calf (tiny chip to foot of spine, minor browning), spine gilt, red morocco lettering piece on spine. Paris: Debure l’aîné, 1735.
First edition in French (1st ed.: 1727) of Hales’s classic demonstration of the respiration of plants, and that plants quantitatively absorb material from the air. This translation was one of the earliest publications of the great naturalist Buffon, “an influential…trans. which has the famous ‘Préface du traducteur,’ in which Buffon praises the experimental method, and includes Hales’s appendix of 1733.”–D.S.B., VI, p. 47... More