gems, jade, Fischer-Book, bibliography, history of mineralogy

An anonymous systematic bibliography of writings on natural history, published at Halle in 1784. The work organizes the contemporary and earlier literature of the natural sciences by subject, providing references to books and other publications concerned with the natural world. Its coverage includes mineralogy and related literature on minerals, stones and precious stones, making it useful for identifying works available to eighteenth-century naturalists and tracing the bibliography of early gemological and mineralogical studies. As a subject-arranged bibliography rather than a natural-history treatise itself, its principal value lies in documenting the literature and development of the natural sciences up to the time of its publication.