BUCH (Christian-Léopold Freiherr von). Trip to Norway and La - Lot 115

Lot 115
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BUCH (Christian-Léopold Freiherr von). Trip to Norway and La - Lot 115
BUCH (Christian-Léopold Freiherr von). Trip to Norway and Lapland, made in the years 1806, 1807 and 1808. Paris, Gide fils, 1816. 2 vols. in-8, green half calf, spines smooth and ornate, gilt title and tomaison, tr. straw (contemporary binding). First French translation, illustrated with 3 maps, 2 of which are folded. Baron Christian Leopold von Buch (1774-1853), German geologist and geographer, studied at the Freiberg School of Mines with Alexander von Humboldt, with whom he explored in 1797 the rock formations of Styria and the adjacent Alps. His faith in the Neptunist theory of his former professor Abraham Gottlob Werner (which explains the formation of the earth's crust mainly by the progressive accumulation of precipitates in a primordial ocean covering the entire surface of the earth) was shaken during a stay in Italy in 1798, and then during the in situ study of Vesuvius in 1799 and 1805 with Humboldt and Gay Lussac. The scientific results of this research are contained in his book Geognostische Beobachtungen auf Reisen durch Deutschland und Italien (1802-1809). Von Buch also spent two years in the Scandinavian islands to demonstrate that many of the erratic blocks in northern Germany came from Scandinavia. He also claimed that the whole of Sweden was slowly but steadily rising above sea level from Frederikshald to Âbo. This book, first published in 1810 under the title Reise durch Norwegen und Lappland, is the result of these discoveries. In 1815 he visited the Canary Islands with the Norwegian botanist Christian Smith to study their volcanic origins (his physical description of the Canary Islands was published in Berlin in 1825), before travelling to the Hebrides and to the shores of Scotland and Ireland. In 1832 he produced the beautiful 42-sheet geological map of Germany and helped to establish the statigraphy of the Jurassic system. A complete edition of his works was published by J. W. Ewald & al. in 1867-1885. Two s
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