26. Antiquaria 2012 - Antiquaria-Ludwigsburg

Stand 7 Antiquariat Michael Kühn Erdmannstr. 11
10827 Berlin, Germany
Tel.: +49 (0)30 86396934
Fax: +49 (0)30 86396955
Versandantiquariat mit Schwerpunkt Alte & Seltene Drucke
im Bereich Naturwissenschaften, Technik, Medizin.
Ellis, John, Daniel Solander. Natural History of Many Curious
and Uncommon Zoophytes. London: printed for Benjamin
White and son … and Peter Elmsly, 1786. 4° [XII],
208 pp., with 63 engraved plates. Contemporary half calf,
slightly spotted, worn, covers formerly detached, now repaired.
1.600,–
First edition, edited by Daniel Solander. Corals were not well understood before
the work of John Ellis. They were usually considered to be lithophytes, or mineral
vegetables. Ellis showed in the 1750’s that corals were the stony productions
of animals, and hence were zoophytes-animals that looked like plants.
This, his major work on the subject, was finally published ten tears after his
death. Most of the sixty-two plates depict various kinds of corals, but some
attention is also given to other invertebrates, such as sea pens and sea cucumbers,
which are not at all related to corals. The term „zoophyte“ would linger
on into the nineteenth century, before it eventually became obsolete. John Ellis
(1710–1776) was a British linen merchant and naturalist. Ellis specialised in
the study of corals. He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1754 and
in the following year published: An essay towards the Natural History of the
Corallines. He was awarded the Copley Medal in 1767. His A Natural History of
Many Uncommon and Curious Zoophytes, written with Daniel Solander, was
published posthumous-ly in 1786. Daniel Carlsson Solander (1733–1782) was
a Swedish naturalist and an apostle of Carl Linnaeus. Solander was the first
university educated scientist to set foot on Australian soil. Solander enrolled
at Uppsala University in July 1750 and studied languages and the humanities.
The professor of botany was the celebrated Carolus Linnaeus who was soon
impressed by young Solander’s ability and accordingly persuaded his father to
let him study natural history. Solander traveled to England in June 1760 to promote
the new Linnean system of classification. He was an assistant librarian
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www.kuehn-books.de
at the British Museum from 1763 onwards, and elected as Fellow of the Royal
Society in the following year. Afterwards he held the position of Keeper of
Printed Books at the British Museum. In 1768 Solander and his fellow scientist
Dr. Herman Spöring were employed by Joseph Banks, to join him on James
Cook’s first voyage to the Pacific Ocean on board the Endeavour. They were
the botanists who inspired the name Botanist Bay (which later became Botany
Bay) for the first landing place of Cook’s expedition in Australia. On their
return in 1771 Solander became Banks’s secretary and librarian and lived in
his house at Soho Square.
Goldfuß, Georg August. Petrefacta Musei Universitatis Regiae
Borussicae Rhenanae Bonnensis nec non Hoeninghusiani
Crefeldensis, iconibus et descriptionibus illustrata. [=
Abbildungen und Beschreibungen der Petrefacten des Museums
der Königl. Preussischen Rheinischen Universität zu
Bonn und des Hoeninghausischen zu Crefeld hrsg. von August
Goldfuss] 3 Vol. Düsseldorf: Craz & Comp, 1826–1833.
2° [Folio] [10], 252 pp.; [2], 224 pp. with Frontispiz & 146
plates [plate 40, 41, 42, 43 in zwei Zuständen, 77 fehlt, 97
zwei Zustände, 121 fehlt] & 34 plates [ohne 8; num. I-XXXIV]
& 40 plates [num. I-XL] [zusammen 223 Tafeln]. Contemporary
halfcalf, gilt spine, rubbed and soiled, spine repaired,
library stamps to text vol. and a few plates, little dustmarked.
[Nebentitel: Petrefacta Germaniae tam ea, quae in museo
universitatis regiae Borussicae …] 5.000,–