HACQUET (Belsazar). Physikalisch= Politische Reise aus den Dinarischen durch die Julischen, Carnischen, Rhätischen in die Norischen Alpen, im Jahre 1781 und 1783 unternommen von Hacquet. Leipzig, A. F. Bohme, 1785. 2 volumes in 1 vol. in-8°, antique hardback, title page on spine (soiling, accidents). A very rare and important work of geography on the Eastern Alps. Illustrated with a frontispiece engraving, 6 vignettes in the text (including the title vignette) and 6 fold-out hors-texte plates (vol. 1) and 4 vignettes in the text (including the title vignette) and 6 fold-out hors-texte plates numbered VII to XII (vol. 2). The first engraving is of the Tre Cime de Lavaredo, seen from Auronzo. The author describes the formation of Lake Alleghe, the result of a gigantic landslide in 1771. An essential work, the equivalent of Saussure's Voyages dans les Alpes for the Eastern Alps. The rarest of the works published by this author, much harder to find than the Saussure! In volume I, pages XVII-XVIII (explanation of plates) have been bound in after p. 152. Small worm gallery in the margin at the foot of the book in the middle of volume I, another slightly larger gallery in the margin at the head of the book at the end of volume II (affecting neither the text nor the plates). More or less marked yellowing. Remains a good copy, "in its original condition". Belsazar Hacquet de la Motte (Le Conquet 1739 - Vienne 1815) was born in Brittany; he left France at a very young age and studied medicine in Vienna. He became professor of anatomy and natural sciences at the Lyceum of Llubiana in 1780, then at the University of Lemberg in 1788, before settling permanently in Vienna in 1810. In 1779 and 1781, he travelled through the Tyrol, revealing the Grossglockner region to his contemporaries, and then the whole of the eastern Alps, which he studied from the point of view of geology and the natural sciences.