gems, jade, Fischer-Book, bibliography

An early bibliography of writings on gemstones, published as a contribution to Christian Gottlob Grundig’s Neue Versuche nützlicher Sammlungen zu der Natur- und Kunstgeschichte, sonderlich von Ober-Sachsen. Beyer surveys authors who had written about precious stones, providing a useful guide to the gemological and lapidary literature known in the eighteenth century. The work is of particular historical value as an early attempt to gather references on gemstones into a dedicated bibliographical compilation, and as a record of the sources available to German scholars before mineralogy and gemology developed into more formally organized scientific disciplines.