Volcanology. BORELLI. Historia, et meteorologia incendii Aetnaei anni 1669.

In 4to, mm. 200x136; stiff vellum binding. Pp. 12 (including half title), 162, 1, 1 copper plate. With the final errata leaf. At the beginning one folding plate viewing Etna eruption of 1669, engraved by Doria. Woodcuts in text. Nice copy with wide margins

The rare first edition of the most significant 17th-century study of volcanology, with a fine plate depicting the great 1669 eruption.  The work was written by Borelli during his stay in Messina, in behalf of the FlorentineAccademia del Cimento and of the secretary of the London Royal Society, Henry Oldenburg. The treatise offers not only a narrative description of the Etna eruption, but also systematic observations on the morphology of volcanoes, the nature and the causes of volcanic eruptivity, the generation and the structure of lava, disagreeding with the theories developed by Athanasius Kircher in the Mundus Subterraneus, and benefiting from the publication in 1669 of Steno?s De solido intro solidum (see item E). ?Borelli presented his own highly sophisticated understanding of a volcanic eruption as a geographical phenomenon which could be studied physically, chemically, and mathematically. His account of Etna?s most recent eruption explicitly critiqued a central argumeny put forth by the Jesuit Kircher in the Subterranean World. Using evidence from Etna?s lava flow and chancing morphology, Borelli negated the idea of eternal mountains and perpetual subterranean fires poetically evoked by Kircher? (P. Findlen, Agostino Scilla, p. 147). On September 1671 a review highly positive of the treatise appeared on the Philosophical Transactions, and Borelli observations were widely used by Serao in 1738 (see item 34) and Spallanzani in 1788 (see item 83). DSB, II, 311:"Borelli took the occasion in 1669 to observe it,,an eruption closely, making notes on the topography of the mountain, the location of the flows and the nature of the various materials ejected, and offering some reasoned speculations of the sources of the heat.". Riccardi, I, 159 - Geology emerging, 258.