[Berlin, for the author,] 1838 [1839?]. 8vo (22.5 x 13.7 cm). 23 pp. Original blind front wrapper. Later red half morocco over marbled boards. Spine with black morocco label with gilt title. Purple endpapers.

A very rare first edition of a paper on the highlands of Bolivia, South America, by the German explorer and polymath (geographer, geologist, botanist, zoologist, philosopher) Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), based on Von Humboldt's own observations. Apparently this is the first edition, published on behalf of Von Humboldt. Subsequently, a more condensed version was published in the Bericht über die zur Bekanntmachung geeigneten Verhandlungen der Königl. Preuß. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, Volume I, pp. 38-43. Dedicated on the front wrapper to his friend and colleague, Jean-Baptiste Armand Louis Léonce Élie de Beaumont (1798-1874), a leading French geologist during the mid-19th century. Provenance: stamp of the Élie de Beaumont library in the lower margin of the first text page; on the front pastedown a mineralogical bookplate of the French mineralogist and professor at the École des Mines, Claude Jean Guy Guillemin (1923-1994), who was a co-founder of the International Mineralogical Association. He amassed a great number of geological and mineralogical works. This copy was bound especially for his library. On the front free endpaper verso a mineralogical bookplate of the French mineralogist and professor at the École des Mines, Claude Jean Guy Guillemin (1923-1994), who was a co-founder of the International Mineralogical Association. A very good copy, with a unique provenance. Fiedler and Leitner, Alexander von Humboldts Schriften, p. 370. Not in Ward and Carozzi.