Beschreibung:

AGRICOLA, GEORGIUS. Bergwerck Buch: Darinn nicht Allain alle Empte, Instrument Gezeug und alles so zu diesem Handel gehörig. Frankfurt: Peter Schmidt in Verlegung Sigmund Feyerabend 1580. Folio, 307 x 195mm. (12 1/8 x 7 5/8 in.), later calf, spine gilt, edges stained red, rubbed, hinges weak, a few short marginal tears, occasional light staining, discoloration, marginal dampstaining or soiling . Second German edition, title printed in red and black, gothic type, ornamental woodcut initials, approximately 270 woodcuts by Hans Rudolf Manuel Deutsch many full-page, one folding plate and one folding woodcut strip depicting a drill or probe, approximately 36 x 940 mm. (1 3/8 x 37 in.) , printer's device on verso of last leaf. German translation of De Re Metallica , first published in 1556, the "first systematic treatise on mining and metallurgy and one of the first technological books of modern times... [It] embraces everything connected with the mining industry and metallurgical processes, including administration, prospecting, the duties of officals and companies and the manufacture of glass, sulphur and alum" (PMM 79). "The De Re Metallica was for long the standard work on mining...and was followed by most writers who succeeded Agricola. Not one was so systematically arranged, so well and classically written, so entirely based on personal and practical experience..." (Ferguson I:10 [1621 edition]. Provenance : A few seventeenth-century marginalia ( cropped ) -- Frederick H. Rindge (1857-1905).