Two fine & large folding lithographed plates (one with cont. coloring) & two folding printed tables. xxix, 368 pp., one leaf of errata; x, 368 pp., one leaf of errata. Two vols. 8vo, cont. fine blue calf bound in the Romantic style, sides gilt, flat spines gilt, a.e.g. Göttingen: 1822.

First edition and a beautifully bound set of this ecological classic. Meyer (1782-1856), was a German botanist in Göttingen and physiographer of the Kingdom of Hanover. The present work is “one of the earliest phytosociological and ecological treatises.”–Stafleu & Cowan 5931.

The large handcolored lithographed plate depicts soil profiles from various regions of Germany. More

Finely engraved title-page (a trifle shaved at outer edge) & 675 woodcuts in the text. 11 p.l. (incl. engr. title), 1187 (i.e., 1185), [87] pp. Folio, cont. Dutch vellum over boards (upper joint with small split of 7 cm. at foot, minor pale dampstaining to first 20 leaves & last third of book), panelled in blind, central arabesque in blind to each cover, ties gone. Amsterdam: H. Laurentius, 1644.

First edition to be edited by Joannes Bodaeus à Stapel; it “is one of the best and most thoughtfully prepared of all the editions of Theophrastos.”–Hunt 240.

H.H. Bartlett wrote in his Fifty-five Rare Books (Ann Arbor: 1949) of this edition: “It is interesting not only because of the brilliance of the editing, but, curiously enough, to the American botanist as well, for involving in the discussion certain species from Virginia, other parts of the New World, and Asia. The illustrations of these plants have been largely overlooked in botanical history, because of their incidental presence in a work which might not be expected to contain anything of the sort. Some were merely borrowed from l’Escluse or de Lobel, but others seem to be original in this work.” More