Milestones of Science Books

NOCETI, Carlo; BOSCOVICH, Roger Joseph.

De iride et aurora boreali, carmina... cum notis Josephi Rogerii Boscovich.

Rome: Ex typographia Palladis, excudebant Nicolaus et Marcus Palearini, 1747.

1st Edition. Hardcover. Near Fine. Item #002366

4to (224 x 165 mm). [12] 127 [1] pp. Signatures: a6 A-Q4 (K3 cancel), 70 leaves. Half-title, woodcut device on title, woodcut initials, head and tail-pieces. Two engraved plates of diagrams, numbered Tab I-II (bound as throwouts at pp. 48 and at the end). Contemporary sprinkled sheep, richly gilt spine, sprinkled paper pastedowns, red and yellow mottled edges, old paper shelf-labels on spine (worming in upper joint). Worm holes in inner margin, well away from the text and images. Text bright and unspotted, early annotations in French, mostly in pencil but a longer annotation in ink on p. 93 on a pasted in strip of paper; Walter Pagel library (paper label to front pastedown). A clean, crisp copy. ----

Sommervogel V, col. 1784, no. 1; Riccardi I/1, 175, 29; de Backer-S. V, 1784,1. - First edition. "An Italian translation was published in 1753. Two didactic poems, the first on the rainbow, the second on the aurora borealis, each followed by a long scientific commentary by Boscovich (pp. 19.48 and 89.127). Boscovich's own work, De aurora boreali had been published at Rome in 1738." (R. Gaskell, Books from the Library of Walter Pagel, Pt. II, 147).

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