A POPULAR TREATISE ON GEMS, IN REFERENCE TO THEIR SCIENTIFIC VALUE... by Feuchtwanger, Lewis - 1859

New York: D. Appleton & Co, 1859. Third edition. 12mo, original embossed blue cloth, gilt. Fine hand-tinted frontispiece depicting native gemstones. (6), 505, (5) pages; 17 additional plates, including 8 that are hand-tinted and 2 that are partially hand-tinted. Binding worn at spine; cloth faded in color; contents very good. Sinkankas, Gemology: An Annotated Bibliography, No. 2083: "this edition is greatly expanded in content with technical matter taking up the first two parts and leaving descriptions to the last part. ... The frontispiece, rather crudely executed, is the first American colored book illustration of a native gem mineral, namely, zircon, shown as a fine crystal perched on matrix from Canada. ... Very scarce." Feuchtwanger's treatise was the first such work on gemstones published in the United States, having originally been published in 1838. This is technically the third edition, though the author would publish a stated third edition in 1867. Dr. Lewis Feuchtwanger (1807-1876) is best known to numismatists for his one- and three-cent tokens struck in "Feuchtwanger's Composition." Ex Q. David Bowers Library.