SAUSSURE (Horace-Bénédict de). Voyages dans les Alpes, précédés d'un essai sur l'histoire naturelle des environs de Genève. Neuchâtel, Samuel Fauche puis Louis Fauche-Borel, 1779-1796. 4 volumes in-4, fawn half-calf, smooth spine decorated, marbled edges (period binding). Sought-after first edition of this seminal work on mountaineering and crucial to our knowledge of the Alps. The illustrations include 4 title vignettes, 4 entablature views (2 in vol. I, 1 in vol. II, 1 in vol. III), 2 maps (vol. I and II) and 22 views on 21 hors-texte plates, most of them folding (7 including one double in vol. I, 6 in vol. II, 2 in vol. III and 6 in vol. IV). The plates were drawn by Bourrit and Théodore de Saussure, the author's nephew, and engraved by Geissler, A. Töpffer and Wexelberg. The second volume comes from the second edition, produced in Neuchâtel in the same year as the first edition in Geneva, with a few errors corrected. Horace-Bénédict de Saussure (1740-1799), philosopher, physicist, botanist, mineralogist and geologist, travelled the Alps for thirty years. His Voyages dans les Alpes contain numerous developments on flora, geology and glaciers, but also recount the first attempts to climb Mont Blanc, a feat that Saussure achieved on 3 August 1787, one year after the Savoyards Paccard and Balmat, as well as the stay he made at the Col du Géant. A very attractive copy in attractive contemporary binding. Worm damage to a headpiece, marginal repair to the bottom of a leaf (I, 119). Perret, n°3911 - Regards sur les Alpes, n°19 - Brunet, V, 150 - Lonchamp, n°2615