BOUE, Ami (1794-1881)

Essai géologique sur l'ecosse

Paris: Veuve Courcier, no date, 1820.
8vo, pp. [x] 519 [5]. Plates: 9 folding lithographed plates: numbered Pl. 1--7 and 2 unnumbered maps, the second hand-coloured. Leaf size and condition: 220 x 135mm, untrimmed, largely unopened. Some foxing. Binding: Original pink wrappers, rebacked. Provenance and annotation: Faint library stamp on half-title (illegible); booksellers label 'Librairie des Sciences Générales, H. Bécus' [Paris] dated November 1896 inside wrapper. References: Challionor 96; Ward and Carozzi 270.
First edition.
§ The first account of the geology of Scotland. Born in Hamburg to Swiss parents Boué studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh (MD 1817) where one of his teachers was Robert Jameson who introduced him to the study of geology, to which he devoted the rest of his life. The book is dedicated to Jameson. 'Although a student of Jameson, he atttached himself to Hutton's party in regard to the origin of basalt, phonolite, trachyte, porphyry, and granite' (Zittel p. 270). <<In many respects this remarkable work was far in advance of its time, particularly in regard to the views expressed in it regarding the trappean rocks. Boué's acute eyes recognised the volcanic nature of the great series of "roches feldspathiques et trappéennes" of central Scotland, which he claimed to mark eruptions in the time of the Old Red Sandstone. He boldly introduced for the first time, into the geological table for that country, a division entitled "Terrain Volcanique," wherein he included not only the younger basalts of the Inner Hebrides which had been described by Faujas St. Fond, Macculoch and others, but also the basalts, andesites, trachytes, tuffs and other rocks intercalated in the Carboniferous system. >>Geike p. 264.

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