Manual of mineralogy: containing an account of simple minerals, and also a description and arrangement of mountain rocks JAMESON, Robert

[8], liv, [2], 501 [i.e. 491]pp, [5]. With a half-title and two terminal leaves of publisher's advertisements. Contemporary gilt-ruled half-calf, marbled paper boards, contrasting black morocco lettering-piece. Lightly rubbed, spine sunned. Very occasional light spotting. The first edition of Scottish geologist and natural historian Robert Jameson's (1774-1854) final published work. Jameson adopts Carl Friedrich Mohs' (1773-1839) newly instituted mineral classification system, published in his Die Charakteristik des Naturhistorischen Mineral Systemes the year prior. The chapters on mountain rocks draw heavily on material included on Jameson's Elements of Geognosy (1808), which included the first account in English of Werner's geognostic theories. In 1804, aged only 30, Jameson was appointed the Regius Professor of Natural History at Edinburgh, and founded - and presided over - the Wernerian Natural History Society in 1808. In both positions Jameson was encountered by a young Charles Darwin; although apparently bored by his geological lectures, Darwin was nevertheless a frequent attendee of the Wernerian society, where he witnessed John James Audabon, who featured in lectures of 1826 and 1827 - demonstrate a method of displaying birds using wires in order to better record their features. Size: 8vo