Leonhard, Karl Casar von; Die Basalt - Gebilde in Ihren Beziehungen zu Normalen und Abnormen Felsmassen…Atlas XX Tafeln.. Stuttgart, E. Schweizerbart’s Verlags - Handlung, 1832. Small folio, pp. 10 (title and index), 20 pages of plates of geological features, about 14 figures per plate, many hand colored.
The rare atlas volume to Leonhard’s Die Basalt - Gebilde. The two octavo size text volumes are not present. The atlas is complete and bound in an archival folder. The binding is tight and exceptionally clean, the text and plates are very clean and bright with only minor light spotting. In very good condition.
Karl Casar von Leonhard (1779-1862) was a well to do German geologist and was the father of Gustav von Leonhard. He was appointed to the chair of mineralogy at the University of Heidelberg in 1818. Leonhard published his first work in 1803 which was on the blowpipe and its application to mineralogy. This was followed by several influential works on geology and mineralogy. He was also the founder and publisher of one of the first mineralogical magazines in 1830, Taschenbuch für die gesammte Mineralogie, which was the predecessor to today’s Jahrbuch [Neues] für Mineralogie, Geologie, und Palaeontologie. Leonhard's personal mineral collection of over 8,000 specimens from the Harz, Switzerland, Poland, Vesuvius, Eifel, France, Iceland and elsewhere. This collection was acquired by the University of Göttingen after his death.
Initially, Leonhard was a supporter of Abraham Gottlob Werner's theory that all rocks, including basalt and granite, had an aqueous origin, and were not igneous in nature. However, Leonhard came to disagree with this theory, and he published in 1832 a treatise called "Die Basalt-Gelbilde" (Basalt Formations). In this work he described and illustrated a variety of basalt intrusions in rock formations all over Europe. The hand-colored engravings of these intrusions are striking. Several of these illustrations are of geological site which became well known to geologists as places to observe intrusions into pre-existing limestone. Leonhard’s illustrations provided clear evidence of the volcanic origin of basaltic intrusives.
Die Basalt-Gelbilde was published in 1832 in two octavo size texts and a separate small folio size atlas. The texts and atlas were often separated and are very seldom found together. Our copy of the atlas is from the library of the noted geologist Louis Agassiz with his stamp. We have seen scanned copies of the two text volumes with the same Agassiz stamp on the internet. So at some point in the past the text and atlas became separated.
