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This is the Samuel Fauche, père et fils, Neuchatel first printing of Horace-Bénédict de Saussure’s four essay collection, Essais sur L’ Hygrometrie (524 numbered pages), with all text in french.
The cover (app. 8″ x 6″), speckled leather with extensive gilt decorations on the five-banded spine, is in good overall condition, but with scuffs, and consequent missing surface leather, to the boards, outside edges, and, most notably, to the top of the spine (see photo). The spine is straight and securely connected.
The inside is very good, with stains to the otherwise blank end pages and to the outside edges of a small group of pages, but with most pages unstained. All text, and the many illustrations, including the eleven multi-panel tables and descriptions, are clean and unfaded. The only extraneous element is the red-ink stamp of Geo. R. Brush, on the title page (see photo).
There are no written notations. There is one cracked gutter, but the binding is tight, with no loose or missing pages. There are three page section gaps, apparently a flaw common to all first printings. The above photos are accurate reflections of the book conditions.
