Geology and Mineralogy Considered with Reference to Natural Theology
London: William Pickering, 1837. Second edition. Engraved plates. Russia leather over boards. Octavos. xvi, 618, [i] and vii, [1]-110, 69 plates, [111]-129 pages. Near fine. Russia leather over boards with marbled endpapers and edges, gilt-stamped border rules to boards, all board edges with gilt-stamped filagree. Spines with five raised bands, red and black title blocks stamped in gilt. All hinges intact, textblocks sound. Some minor rubs to external extremities. Armorial bookplate of Charles Hammersley on front pastedown of each volume.
William Buckland was a theologian and early geologist and paleontologist. He wrote the first full account of a fossil dinosaur, and his work with the fossils in Kirkdale Cave showed how the distant past could be reconstructed through careful scientific analysis.
In this present work--Buckland's contribution to The Bridgewater Treatises--he acknowledges that the Biblical flood of Noah cannot be confirmed by geological evidence. By 1840 he was convinced that observations which had earlier been interpreted as evidence of a global deluge were in fact more consistent with major glaciation.
A beautiful, well-preserved set. Volume II contains all 87 engraved plates comprising 705 figures in all. Plate 1 is a striking fold-out and colored cross section of an ideal section of the earth's crust "intended to shew the order and deposition of the stratified rocks, with their relationships to the unstratified rocks." Total unfolded length of Plate 1 is just over 4 feet.
Item #973
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