Folding handcolored engraved frontispiece, two engraved plates (one folding & heightened in red), one folding plate of printed music, & music printing in the text. xii, 52 pp., one leaf of errata. 8vo, cont. marbled semi-stiff boards (spine a little defective), uncut. Erfurt: Beyer & Maring, 1800.

First edition of this attractive and fascinating book which relates harmony to colors; it is very much a product of early German Romanticism. Dalberg (1760-1812), was an author, composer, and aesthetician. He was “born into a noble family…though physically deformed, he was a virtuoso pianist…He studied composition with Ignaz Holzbauer and travelled extensively in Italy and England. His... More about Untersuchungen über den Ursprung der Harmonie und ihre allmählige Ausbildung

268 pp. 8vo, early 19th-cent. blue wrappers (title somewhat soiled in outer portion, spine a little worn), uncut. Paris: chez l’Auteur, An X [1802].

First edition of the author’s chief geological work. Lamarck’s views on geology were an important part of his total conception of nature, which in turn led to his theory of evolution. For Lamarck, “the main geological force was water acting according to uniformitarian principles over millions of years…Lamarck’s uniformitarianism and great geological time scale have led some to say that he was his own Lyell.”–D.S.B., VII, p. 589.

Prof. Carozzi, in his “Lamarck’s Theory of the Earth: ‘Hydrogéologie’,” Isis, Vol. 55 (1964), pp. 293-307, describes this book as a “bibliographical rarity which has been, and still is, virtually unknown either to geologists or historians of science.” More about Hydrogéologie, ou, Recherches sur l'influence qu'ont les eaux sur la surface du globe terrestre...