Solothurn, Jent & Gassmann, 1841. 8vo (21.9 x 14.2 cm). Half-title, title page, xii, 327 pp. Later buckram, with gilt title on the spine. Printed front wrapper bound in.

The geologist, palaeontologist, and invertebrate zoologist Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (1807-1873) was the founder of glacial geology. He was president of the Swiss Society of Natural Sciences and went to the United States in 1846, where he became a professor at Harvard University. He played a major role in the founding of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard and of the National Academy of Sciences. In 1863 he was appointed a regent of the Smithsonian Institution. The Untersuchungen über die Gletscher, or Études sur les Glaciers(French edition) is perhaps Agassiz' most fundamental, famous and sought-after work. Small discolouring and hole to the last leaf, just touching a printed number in the errata list, otherwise a very good, clean copy. PMM 309; Ward and Carozzi, 13.