gems, jade, Fischer-Book, bibliography

A large bibliographical catalogue of the natural-history library assembled by the Augsburg merchant and collector Johann Paul Cobres. Deliciae Cobresianae records books and other printed works relating to natural history, including zoology, botany, mineralogy, geology, chemistry and related subjects, often with bibliographical notes and references useful for identifying earlier literature. For gemological research, it is particularly valuable as an eighteenth-century guide to books on minerals, precious stones, lapidary subjects and related branches of natural history. The work provides an important snapshot of the scientific literature available to a well-informed private collector in the late eighteenth century and remains useful for tracing rare or obscure early works.