Hydrogéologie, ou Recherches sur l'influence qu'ont les eaux sur la surface du globe terrestre ; sur les causes de l'existence du bassin des mers, de son déplacement et de son transport successif sur les différens points de la surface de ce globe ; enfin sur les changemens que les corps vivans exercent sur la nature et l'état de cette surface

First edition, very scarce, of this important work.

Contemporary-style half speckled fawn calf binding, smooth spine decorated with triple gilt fillets, green shagreen title label, small vellum corners, marbled paper boards, bookplate pasted onto a pastedown, red edges, modern binding.

A restored loss to the left margin of the title page.

Hydrogéologie contains Lamarck’s geological observations gathered during his travels in Germany, Hungary, and France.

Its principal merit lies in demonstrating the considerable importance of plants and animals as agents of geological transformation.

It is in this work that the word biology appears for the first time, on page 8, which Lamarck regarded as an appropriate term for the sciences of life. "Lamarck's geology was closely connected with his work in other fields. His Hydrogéologie, which grew out of a 1799 memoir presented to the Academy and his work in invertebrate paleontology, was published in 1802. He originally intended it to be a much broader work, as the manuscript shows (…) It was to have been a terrestrial physics including meteorology, geology, and biology, a term he coined. He had not only a sense of interrelation of fields but, within geology, a vision of the whole. He saw all of nature working according to similar principles : general natural tendencies producing gradual change over long periods of time, with local circumstances explaining the irregularities. His approach to geology was similar to that in other sciences : concern with the general principles and contempt for those who interested themselves too much with the specifics". Cf. Leslie J. Burlingame, notice "Lamarck", in: D.S.B.

A remarkable copy, enriched with a 6-line autograph manuscript by Lamarck, inserted between pp. 56 and 57, providing details on an ancient masonry discovered in the Somme department and attesting to an earlier shoreline: "L'abbaye de Valoir près de l'Authie dépt. de la Somme conserve encore dans ses fondations et ses caves les restes d'une maconnerie tres ancienne, soupconnée romaine, dans lesquels on voit les anneaux pour amarer les batimens marins et des eperons de vaisseau, accompagnés de beaucoup de petrifications ; ce qui prouve qu'alors c'etoit un quai ou arrivoient les eaux de la mer" (s.l.n.d., 1 p., oblong 16mo).

A very good copy.