BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS SCIENCES RECENT ACQUISITIONS 1 Blackwell’s Rare Books 48-51 Broad Street, Oxford, OX1 3BQ Direct Telephone: +44 (0) 1865 333555 Switchboard: +44 (0) 1865 792792 Email: [email protected] Fax: +44 (0) 1865 794143 www.blackwell.co.uk/rarebooks Our premises are in the main Blackwell bookstore at 48-51 Broad Street, one of the largest and best known in the world, housing over 200,000 new book titles, covering every subject, discipline and interest, as well as a large secondhand books department. There is lift access to each floor. The bookstore is in the centre of the city, opposite the Bodleian Library and Sheldonian Theatre, and close to several of the colleges and other university buildings, with on street parking close by. Oxford is at the centre of an excellent road and rail network, close to the London - Birmingham (M40) motorway and is served by a frequent train service from London (Paddington). Hours: Monday–Saturday 9am to 6pm. (Tuesday 9:30am to 6pm.) Purchases: We are always keen to purchase books, whether single works or in quantity, and will be pleased to make arrangements to view them. Auction commissions: We attend a number of auction sales and will be happy to execute commissions on your behalf. Blackwell’s online bookshop www.blackwell.co.uk Our extensive online catalogue of new books caters for every speciality, with the latest releases and editor’s recommendations. We have something for everyone. Select from our subject areas, reviews, highlights, promotions and more. Orders and correspondence should in every case be sent to our Broad Street address (all books subject to prior sale). Please mention Sciences Catalogue when ordering. Winter 2014 Front cover illustration: Item 45 Rear cover illustration: Item 7 1. Anstice (Robert) Remarks on the Comparative Advantages of Wheel Carriages, of different Structure and Draught. Illustrated with Plates. Bridgewater: Printed for the Author, by S. Symes, 1790, FIRST EDITION, 8 folding engraved plates, and a small Masonic woodcut at the end, lacking half-title, some foxing, outer leaves a bit browned, pp. [3-] 69, 8vo, original(?) boards, worn at extremities, spine a bit defective at top and tail, good (ESTC N26268, 5 copies on either side of the Atlantic, but not in BL or Bodleian) £850 Robert Anstice (1757-1845) was a ship-owner and merchant, civil engineer and Somerset’s first County Surveyor. He was a keen amateur geologist and ornithologist, and wrote two books on mathematics. His professional work in the county covered roads and bridges, sea-wall work at Huntspill and Blue Anchor, and much drainage works, including Kings Sedgemoor Drain at Dunball. The present work, dedicated to the local Masonic Lodge, is ‘the fruit of leisure hours.’ The book is fairly poorly printed and on one page there is only a partial impression, but the text can be made out. These would seem to be the original boards, in which case the lack of the half-title is odd. 2. ‘Aristotle.’ Aristotle’s Works: Containing the Master- piece, Directions for Midwives, and Counsel and Advice to Child-bearing Women. With various useful remedies. Printed for the Booksellers [by John Smith, Tooley Street], c. 1850, with a colour printed frontispiece and additional title, 6 hand-coloured plates, and illustrations in the text, pp. 352, 16mo, original purple cloth, spine pictorially gilt, spine a little faded, good £250 A late flowering of this hardy perennial. The only copy in COPAC (York Minster) has a note after the imprint [?Halifax, Milner]. There are a few other UK locations in WorldCat, as well as a relatively small number in the US. 3. Arrhenius (Svante August) Recherches sur la conductibilité Galvanique des électrolytes. [Parts] I, II. Stockholm: P.A. Norstedt & Söner, 1884, 2 parts in 1 vol., with 1 lithographed plate, pp. [i, general title/wrapper], [1-3] 4-63; [1-3] 4-89 (the last leaf, verso blank, forming the rear self-wrapper), original printed wrappers, uncut and unopened, slight cracking to spine and a hint of browning round the edges, otherwise fine £1,200 The rare offprint issue of Arrhenius’s landmark discovery of the theory of electrolytic disassociation. Arrhenius was awarded the 1903 Nobel Prize in chemistry ‘in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered to the advancement of chemistry by his electrolytic theory of dissociation.’ By 1880, ‘it was known that solutions of certain compounds conduct electricity and that chemical reactions could occur when a current was passed. It was thought that the current decomposed the substance. In 1883 Arrhenius proposed a theory that substances were partly converted into an active form when dissolved. The active part was responsible for conductivity. In the case of acids and bases, he correlated the strength with the degree of decomposition on solution. This work was published as Recherches sur la 1 BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS conductibilite galvanique des electrolytes and submitted as his doctoral dissertation. Arrhenius sent his work to several leading physical chemists, including Jacobus van’t Hoff, Friedrich Ostwald, and Rudolf Clausius, who were immediately impressed’ (Biographical Encyclopedia of Scientists). The dissertation only gained Arrhenius a fourth class degree: Professor Sven Otto Petterson remarked ‘There are chapters in Arrhenius’ thesis which alone are worth more or less all the faculty can offer in the way of marks’ (quoted in DSB). 4. (Astronomy.) SPHAERAE ATQUE ASTRORUM COELESTIUM RATIO, NATURA, & MOTUS ad totius mundi fabricationis cognitione[m] fundamenta. [Basle]: Johann Walder, 1536, title-page with woodcut Valderus device within fine historiated woodcut title-border after Hans Holbein, numerous geometrical and astronomical woodcut diagrams in text (two full-page), text in Greek and Latin, a little browned in places, pp. [16], 104, [4], 105-294 (lacking the final blank leaf), the two unsigned leaves of tables here bound after p.104, before the opening of Aratus, small 4to, eighteenth-century blind-ruled sheep, spine richly gilt with red lettering piece, rebacked, endpapers replaced, manuscript ink inscription (cropped at foot) in an early hand to bottom margin of title-page (‘Satiabor cum apparuerit gloria tua’ [Psalm 16:15]), with ink corroded through paper (not affecting printed text), ownership inscription on title of Juan de Herrera, good (Adams S-1577; Hoffmann III, p.503; Houzeau & Lancaster I, 2440; VD16 S-8303; Hieronymus/Griechischer Geist Nr. 287; Hamel 3098) £2,500 First edition of this compilation of important astronomical texts, including the first printed edition (in any language) of Ptolemy’s Planisphaerium, accompanied by the related mediaeval work on the same subject by Jordanus. Written in the 2nd century AD, Ptolemy’s Planisphaerium deals with the problem of constructing a diagram in a plane representing the celestial sphere, in such a way that circles on the sphere are represented by circles in the plane. Ptolemy’s construction amounts, in fact, to producing a stereographic projection, that is, a projection through one of the sphere’s poles upon a plane parallel to the equator (though it is open to dispute whether Ptolemy was aware of this fact). Stereographic projection provided the mathematical basis of the plane astrolabe, an instrument which was widely used in the medieval Islamic world. The original Greek text of Planisphaerium is lost, but it survives in an Arabic translation by the 11th century astronomer and mathematician Maslamah Ibn Ahmad al-Majriti of Cordoba. The present Latin translation is by the philosopher and astronomer Herman Dalmatin, or Herman of Carinthia, one of the most important translators and popularisers of Arabic astronomical works in 12th century Europe. Ptolemy’s text is followed by a related medieval work by Jordanus de Nemore, a 13th century mathematician who probably taught at the University of Toulouse. His treatise on stereographic projection generally known as Demonstratio de plana sphaera (here simply called ‘Planisphaerium Iordani’) contains five propositions dealing with various aspects of stereographic projection. The first and historically the most important 2 SCiences proposition established in full generality that circles on the surface of a sphere when projected stereographically on a plane remain circles (Ptolemy had proved this only in certain special cases). The volume also includes the pseudo-Proclan work De sphaera in the original Greek with the acclaimed Latin translation by the English Tudor humanist Thomas Linacre. A textbook on spherical astronomy formerly ascribed to Proclus, De sphaera is now known to be an excerpt from the Elementa astronomiae of Geminus, a 1st century BC Greek author. De sphaera comprises the four chapters of Geminus’s work dealing with the general description of the celestial sphere, terrestrial zones and the constellations. It was first published by Aldus Manutius at Venice in 1499 as part of the celebrated compilation Scriptores astronomici veteres [see item 16]. The present edition includes the scholia of the itinerant geographer and cartographer Jacob Ziegler (ca. 1470-1549), which consist of fifty-six notes mostly concerned with spherical geometry. Several astronomical works by Ziegler himself are also included: De solidae sphaerae constructione, De canonica per sphaeram operatione, as well as his short study Hemicyclium Berosi of the semi-circular sundial devised by the 3rd century BC Babylonian historian, astronomer and priest Berossus the Chaldean. The collection also includes the influential hexameter poemPhaenomena by Aratus (ca. 310 BC-240 BC), in the original Greek with the scholia by Theon of Alexandria. It appears to be based on two prose works by Eudoxus of Cnidus, written about a century earlier. Its purpose is to give an introduction to the constellations, with the rules for their risings and settings; and of the circles of the sphere. The Phaenomena was first published in Scriptores astronomici veteres, and proved extremely popular. Aratus’s work is here preceded by a short treatise, inspired by Aratus, on the construction and use of celestial globes by the Byzantine monk Leontius Mechanicus.