1871 and 1880. Together, two volumes, 8vo and folio portfolio; pp. [ii], 45, [1] blank; with five chromolithograph wall charts mounted on linen, 565 x 715mm, each with two eyelets in upper margin; text volume somewhat browned and spotted, plates also a little foxed and browned, with some staining to verso, but otherwise good; text in contemporary cloth-backed blue marbled boards, with title label mounted on upper cover lettered in ms, with library stamp on upper cover, extremities a little rubbed and worn; wall charts housed within the original drab grey cloth-backed card portfolio, with printed label mounted on upper cover, preserving the original cloth ties, head and tail of spine a little worn, covers lightly scuffed and stained; overall a good copy. Scarce, though mixed set, of the first edition of the text and the second edition of the charts, of this striking example of ‘infographics’, introducing the study of geology and prehistory via a series of large wall-charts, by the German geologist Oskar Friedrich von Fraas (1824-97). As such it provides a fascinating view of contemporary geological theory. Fraas was the geological curator at the natural history museum in Stuttgart, and had been strongly influenced by the success of Louis Figuier’s ‘La terre avant le Déluge’ published in 1863, and which prompted him to publish his own ‘Vor der Sündfluth!’ in 1866.
The second edition of 1880 was expanded from four to five wall charts, the first four depicting the geological profiles and landscapes of the Silurian to Permian period; the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous; the Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene age; and the Pleistocene period. The final plate is a prehistoric chart illustrating the Stone Age.