STENO, Nicolaus.

De Solido intra Solidum Naturaliter contento Dissertationis Prodromus.

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Engraved arms of the Grand Duke of Tuscany on title, a large folding engraved plate, & a folding sheet with descriptive letterpress. Title printed in red & black. 1 p.l., 78 pp., 1 leaf. 4to (274 x 204 mm.), cont. vellum over boards (slightly warped, a bit of foxing). Florence: ex Typographia sub signo Stellae, 1669. First edition of a fundamental work for the modern sciences of geology, crystallography, and paleontology; this is a wonderful large paper copy printed no doubt for presentation purposes. Our copy is simply gigantic when compared to regular paper copies. In this book, Steno "described the composition of the earth's crust in Tuscany and a famous diagram in his book shows six successive types of stratification: the first attempt ever made to represent geological sections. This was a sequence which he believed would be found all over the world. He explained the true origin of fossils found in the earth as being remains of once living things and he discriminated between the volcanic, chemical and mechanical modes of the origin of the rocks. He was the first clearly to recognize that the strata of the earth's crust contain the records of a chronological sequence of events from which the history of the earth can be reconstructed. He attempted to find the principles of stratigraphy...He deduced that these changes in the original position of the strata are the real causes of the unevenness of the earth's surface. This was in direct contradiction to the accepted belief that mountains had existed ever since the beginning of things or had simply grown."­Printing & the Mind of Man 151. "This work also contains the first formulated crystallography and, of the constancy of interfacial angles of crystals of quartz, a study basic to mineralogy."­Dibner, Heralds of Science, 90. A very nice copy with the inscription "Ex lib Jo Bapt Monnajoi [?]" on title. D.S.B., XIII, p. 34­"Almost every sentence or paragraph contains new insights." Horblit 96. Sparrow, Milestones of Science, 185.

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