24 17th December 2011 antiquarian books scientifi c works continued from page 23


darkening and rubbing to the binding, and though it is not known to whom it was fi rst given, it did have that close connection to the author that collectors so prize and sold at $110,000 (£69,300). The record for this particular ‘Herald’


stands at $270,000 (then £142,390), paid at Sotheby’s New York in 2007 for an extraordinarily bright, fresh and wholly unrestored copy containing a tipped-in note signed by Darwin and one of those “From the author” inscriptions. The recipient of that copy was also


unknown, but in the enclosed note (which seems to have been directed to John Murray) Darwin writes: “I hope you will send a copy of the Origin to the Pall Mall Gazette, as I hear that they intend reviewing it... at some considerable length; but I do not know who the reviewer is, or whether it is to be favourable or hostile”. Copies of the second and third parts


of the Geological Observations... made by Darwin on the Beagle voyage – the three parts being issued separately over fi ve years but intended as a single work – were also seen in the New York sale. ...Observations on the Volcanic Islands of 1844 and ...on South America (1846),


both in original cloth, sold at record sums of $23,000 (£14,380) and $22,000 (£13,755) respectively. Darwin laboured over the Volcanic


Islands section for 18 months, frustrated at not being able to dwell on the romance of such places as the Galapagos Islands, St Helena or Ascension in a purely scientifi c work, and was disappointed when sales proved poor. In a letter to the pioneering geologist Charles Lyell, he said he felt convinced that geologists did not read each other’s books. Bid to £43,000 at Dominic Winter


on October 5-6 was a very rare copy of James Hutton’s Abstract of a Dissertation read in the Royal Society of Edinburgh... concerning the System of the Earth, its Duration and Stability. Hutton’s ‘uniformitarian’ theories


on the age and continuous formation of the Earth, which he claimed could be studied from terrestrial materials, without cosmological or supernatural intervention, were fi rst broadly published in the RSE’s Transactions in 1788. Offprints are thought to have circulated in 1786 and ’87, but the earliest appearance was in this privately printed and circulated 30pp Abstract... of 1785. This copy is made even more


attractive by the fact that it is inscribed on the title from Hutton to


Don’t mi s a n’t miss a lot.


“Published in Augsburg in 1760, Johann Heinrich‘s Photometria... is a foundation work on the exact measurement of light”


the manufacturer and entrepreneur Matthew Boulton, a fellow member with James Watt, Erasmus Darwin, Josiah Wedgwood, Joseph Priestley and others of the Lunar Society, a debating group who took their name not from any strict astronomical focus but from the fact that they chose to meet on nights when the moon was full, thus making safer their drive home in the early hours. On November 9, the South Cerney


auctioneers took a bid of £9600 on a engraved, aquatinted and hand- coloured, two-sheet map of roughly 12in x 4ft 6in (31cm x 1.37), illustrated on page 23, that shows a Geological Section from London to Snowdon, showing the Varities of the Strata and the Correct Altitudes of the Hills. Published in 1817, this was the work


of William Smith and the colouring, as the sub-title states, corresponds to his famous geological map of England and Wales and his tables of fossils arranged by strata. At Christies’s on November 23 a


1556, Basel fi rst of the fi rst systematic treatise on mining and metallurgy, Agricola’s De re metallica sold at a record £28,000. Described as an uncommonly tall and fresh copy, with margins wider


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Sales marked with an * are those in which books and ephemera form part of a larger sale. Sales marked @ are viewable on antiquestradegazette.com. Auctioneers are asked to send details of specialist book sales, as well as those sales that may contain signifi cant book and ephemera sections, to: Ian McKay Tel: (01795) 890475 • Fax: (01795) 890014 • ianmckay1@btinternet.com


even than those seen in the Feinsilber and Richard Green copies, this copy was in an early 19th century binding. Published in Augsburg in 1760,


Johann Heinrich‘s Photometria... is a foundation work on the exact measurement of light, or photometry, and the King Street sale also saw a fresh, clean fi rst in period boards set another record at £22,000. Sold for €18,000 (£15,480) by


Reiss & Sohn was an 1847 Berlin fi rst in period blue wrappers of Über die Erhaltung der Kraft..., a ground- breaking essay in which Hermann von Helmholz formulated the fi rst law of thermodynamics. Not everything was to be found in


the major antiquarian book salerooms. Brightwells’ November 16 sale in Leominster included a copy of Diffi ciles Nugae or Observations touching the Torricellian Experiment... of 1674. It was catalogued as lacking the front board and estimated at just £40-60, but this is a scarce work – only three other copies showing up in auction records for the last 40 years, and nothing since 1989. I am obliged to the buyer Daniel


McDowell of The Chaucer Head in Ludlow for explaining that it is, in fact, a very good fi rst edition, complete with two plates often lacking, of a work by Sir Matthew Hale written to disprove and disparage Robert Boyle’s fi ndings on containing ‘the Spring and Weight of the Air’. In it, Hale attempts to enlist nature’s ‘abhorrence of a vacuum’ in opposition to Boyle and what became known as Boyle’s Law.


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