BÜTTNER, David Sigismund Rudera diluvii testes, i.e. Zeichen und Zeugen der Sündfluth, in Ansehung des itzigen Zustandes unserer Erd- und Wasser-Kugel, insonderheit der darinnen vielfältig auch zeither in Querfurstischen Revier unterschiedlich angertroffenen, ehemahls verschwemten Thiere und Gewächse... Leipzig, Johann Friedrich Braunen, 1710
4to (195 x 155 mm), pp [viii] 314 [20], with engraved frontispiece, double-page engraved view of Querfurt and 31 plates numbered I-XXIV, XXIVa-XXX, including world map, most plates folding; some marginal spotting, very slight browning to text, a very nice copy in contemporary vellum, red morocco label. £2450
First edition, rare, of this study of the fossils of Querfurt in Saxony, considered as 'relics of the universal deluge'. Büttner (1660-1719) deacon of Querfurt, was a theologian and naturalist, and wrote this work in order to demonstrate that fossils were the remnants of the Flood. 'Büttner ... was firmly convinced of the diluvial origin of fossils, and was strongly opposed to those who attributed these "reliquiae diluvianae" to either the "lusus naturae" or the spermatic principle. Büttner, in his Treatise on the Deposits which are Evidence of the Deluge, refers in surprisingly scurrilous terms to Lhwyd and his animalculae' (Melvin E. Jahn and Daniel J. Woolf in The Lying Stones of ... Beringer, p. 178).
NUC: NN PPAN MH-Z CU IU; OCLC adds Linda Hall Library
£2450
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