[Ferber, Johann Jakob, editor] | First edition of this collection of writings on gold and silver ore

[Ferber, Johann Jakob, editor]

Ist es vorteilhafter, die silberhältigen Erze und Schmelzhüttenprodukte anzuquicken, als sie zu schmelzen? Beantwortet von einigen zu Glashütte bey Schemnitz in Niederhungarn im Sommer und Herbst 1786 versammelten Berg- und Schmelzwesenverständigen. Leipzig and Vienna: Rudolph Grässer, 1787

8vo (168 x 105 mm). Contemporary speckled boards, paper labels on spine, edges speckled red; labels rubbed and soiled.

First edition of this collection of writings on the amalgamation of gold and silver ore. The contributors include Charpentier, Elhuyar, J. Hawkins, O. Henckel, von Trebra, J. D. Weber, and J. G. Hoffinger. Zittel describes Ferber as "a Swedish mineralogist of wide repute ... who taught first at St. Petersburg, afterwards in Berlin, and finally settled in Switzerland ... His description of Naples, and still more his account of the ejected rocks of Vesuvius, are among the finest scientific writings of the eighteenth-century" (p. 41).

Rare—apparently the only copy to appear at auction.

REFERENCES

Hoover 295; cf. Zittel 41

PROVENANCE

Bibliothek der Berlin Gesellschaft naturforschender Freunde (bookplate to front pastedown) — Königl. Landw. Hochschule Bibliothek, Berlin (ink-stamp on title) — Joseph A. Freilich (booklabel to front pastedown; Sotheby's New York, 11 January 2001, lot 185)