A fine copy in midnight blue calf - Lot 469

A fine copy in midnight blue calf PALASSOU (Pierre-Bernard de) Mémoires pour Servir à l'Histoire Naturelle des Pyrénées et des Pays Adjacents (followed by) Suite des Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire Naturelle des Pyrénées et des Pays Adjacents. Pau, Vignancour, 1815-1819. 2 parts in 2 volumes in-8 : XVI, 486pp. 1f./ XXIV, 428pp. 1f. Midnight-blue calf signed LOISELLIER, ornate ribbed spine, triple gilt fillet framing the covers, filleted edges, inner lace, gilt edges. A fine copy. Reunion of the first two "Mémoires", which are the most important. They include: "Observations faites au Pic du Midi de la vallée d'Ossau" "sur les oiseaux de passage", "Mémoire sur la constitution physique des Cagots", "sur le goître des habitans des montagnes", while the second is essentially geological. PALASSOU, born in Oloron in 1745, began his studies with the Jesuits in Pau and continued as a philosophy student in Bordeaux. He went to Paris to study science, where he met LAVOISIER and GUETTARD. The government commissioned him to collect the materials needed to draw up the mineralogical map of France. From then on, he surveyed the Pyrenees and gathered data for this "Essai". For the iconography, he turned to the engineer FLAMICHON, author of the "Théorie de la Terre". He was later appointed a corresponding member of the Académie des Sciences (Labarère 1135 and 1136).