Neuchatel, Société des Sciences naturelles de Neuchatel [Petitpierre et Prince], 1853. Large 4to. 199, 40 pp.; 18 fine lithographed and engraved plates of which ten hand-coloured; severaltables incuding one larger, double-folded. Contemporary quarter cloth over marbled boards; front board with printed title mounted.

Rare first volume of this Swiss natural history journal. The society itself was founded in 1832 by Louis Agassiz and five other naturalists. Agassiz contributed to this volume with several papers, including his Description de quelques espèces de cyprins du Lac de Neuchatel, qui sont encore inconnues aux Naturalistes (with two plates), and Notice sur les fossiles du terrain crétacé du Jura Neuchatelois with one lithographed plates of new fossil echinoderms, as well as his Prodrome d'une monographie des radiaires ou echinodermes. And three hand-coloured engraved maps on Lyell's Figures relations au mémoire de Mons. Lyell sur le soulevement de la Suède. Other papers include Coulon's Description de quelques animaux nouveaux ou peu connus qui se trouvent au Musée de Neuchatel, with six nicely hand-coloured engraved plates of squirrels, and one "perruche". And a translation of a work by Lyell includes one fine plate with fossils. Fore edge uncut. Some light spotting, mostly on the half-title, plates clean; private owner's stamp of the Swiss geologist [César] Eugène Wegmann (1896-1982) on the title page, otherwise unmarked. A very good copy. Cat. BM(NH) p. 1413; Dean I, p. 7 [for Agassiz's cyprins].