Lachmund, Friedrich. 1636-1676.

[Greek: Oryktographia] Hildesheimensis, Sive Admirandorum Fossilium, Quæ In tractu Hildesheimensi reperiuntur, Descriptio Iconibus Illustrata.

Hildesheim, Widow of J. Müller at the Author’s expense 1669.

4to (188 x 147 mm.). [xxiv], 80, [4]p. and ONE FOLDING WOODCUT PLATE, ONE HUNDRED THIRTY WOODCUT IMAGES on twenty-four pages, woodcut title ornament..

18th-century vellum over stiff boards (soiled, scratched, pen marks on rear panel), manuscript spine title, blue edges.

            Only Edition of  THIS SELF-PUBLISHED PRIVATE MUSEUM CATALOG. Lachmund, a physician in Hildesheim, describes and illustrates numerous specimens in his collection — crystals, ruiniform marbles, polyhedron stones, ammonites, strombites, tubulites, cochlites, conchites, entrochites, crinoids, a unicorn horn, a whale vertebra, human kidney stones, magic stones, an amulet in the shape of a fist and an Egyptian idol (acquired from an antiquary in Padua). Lachmund describes his method of acquisition: “I diligently traversed and examined the mountain, the valleys, the quarries and the sandy places between the city and the Steuerwald fortress several times, by longitude and latitude” ([ix], tr.). While citing, i.a., Georg Agricola throughout, Lachmund “took care to differentiate himself from previous authors, stressing that he had found not only the various kinds of rocks described by Agricola, but also ‘other very rare ones,’ including one which ‘as far as I know, has neither been described nor depicted by anyone’” (Cooper). Lachmund also reports on the local soil and closes with an essay on Hildesheim’s sulfurous wells.
            In 1687, G.W. Leibniz (1646-1716) visited Lachmund’s still intact collection. The Oryktographia informed Leibniz’s own terrestrial history Protogaea (1749), which reproduced six of Lachmund’s illustrations. In good condition (lightly browned, four outer margins shaved just touching four images). Bound first is a defective copy of a 1735 dissertation on convalescence (VD18 15131378).
¶Cooper, Inventing the Indigenous: Local Knowledge and Natural History in Early Modern Europe 73n. & 92; Romer, Bibliography of Fossil Vertebrates…1509-1927 II: 773,1669A; Schuh, Annotated Bio-Bibliography of Mineralogy and Crystallography 1469-1919 (online) Lachmund 1 “Rare”; Leibniz, Protogaea ed. Cohen (2008) passim; VD17 23:304752S.

Item #12536

Price: $12,500.00