Naturhistorische Abhandlungen und Erläuterungen besonders die Petrefactenkunde betreffend. Mit acht Steintafeln. by Tilesius von Tilenau, Wilhelm Gottlieb - 1826

XIV, 154 pages, 8 folding lithographed plates with contemporary hand colouring by Thilesius himself (dated and signed Leipzig, 1827 on the last plate). Fine copy on large and thick paperstock. Contemporary red morocco with gilt green morocco label to spine, richly gilt flat spine, frames of gilt floral fillets on both covers, gilt board edges and turn-ins, all edges gilt. Endpapers lined with green glaced paper. Folio (320 x 220 mm). Minor traces of wear to extremeties, minor bumping to upper outer corner of front board. Title recto with crowned stamp of King John of Saxony (1801-1873; Lugt 1405) and verso with deaccession stamp and location number. Overall very fine copy.


A special dedication copy to the king of Saxony, on thick large paper, hand coloured by the author as evidenced by his signature on the last plate and in a sumptuous binding. Nissen ZBI 4140 (1827). First and only edition, rarely seen in trade and especially scarce in contemporary colouring, the work describes fossil finds of invertebrates, including bivalves, gastropods, sponges, and trilobites. Tilesius was then lecturing natural history at the university of Leipzig, especially on fishes (after Bloch), on infusoria, molluscs, echinodermas, et al. The German naturalist and explorer, Wilhelm Gottlieb Tilesius von Tilenau (1769-1857) began in 1790 studies of natural sciences and medicine at the University of Leipzig, and at the same time took drawing lessons from Adam Friedrich Oeser at the art academy in the Pleissenburg. He completed his master's degree of arts in 1795, graduated as a doctor of philosophy in 1797, and in 1801 as a doctor of medicine. In 1795-96 he traveled with the Earl and scientist Johann Centurius Hoffmannsegg by ship to Portugal. On this trip he studied marine animals, as well as the teaching and practice of medicine in Portugal. The results were published in several papers. In 1803 he was appointed professor at Moscow University. He participated as a ship's doctor, marine biologist and expedition artist on the frigate Nadezhda in the first Russian circumnavigation of the globe during 1803-1806 under Adam Johann von Krusenstern. The Nadezhda departed from Kronstadt on the Baltic Sea, with Tilesius joining the expedition at Copenhagen; included among his baggage were a violin and viola, which he played on the voyage. The Nadezhda sailed past the Canary Islands and Brazil, around Cape Horn and across the Pacific Ocean to Japan, stopping at the Marquesas and Hawaiian islands, and also at Kamchatka. After visiting Japan, the Nadezhda set off towards Alaska, then sailed past China to the Indian Ocean, around Africa and back to the Baltic. Tilesius made numerous sketches and watercolors during the trip, particularly after the official artist departed in Japan. Honors Tilesius received on his return included being made a knight in the Order of St. Vladimir, corresponding membership of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences, and a lifetime pension of 300 rubles per year. His illustrated report on the expedition appeared in 1814. However, he did not win public recognition like his contemporary Alexander von Humboldt. One of his projects while in Russia was to reconstruct the skeleton of the Adams mammoth, a woolly mammoth whose nearly intact frozen carcass was excavated from the Siberian permafrost in 1806. This represented one of the earliest attempts to reconstruct the skeleton of an extinct animal. Tilesius made one notable error in this effort, exchanging the tusks so that they diverged instead of converged. In 1814, Tilesius returned from Russia to his hometown of Mühlhausen and put his son in the care of his grandmother. He continued to lecture and publish on zoological, medical and ethnographic subjects, and attained membership in a number of scientific societies across Europe and in the United States, but did not obtain another academic position. He spent most of the rest of his life in Mühlhausen and Leipzig.