Bonnet, C. — Contemplation de la nature.

Amsterdam, Marc-Michel Rey, 1769, 2nd ed., 2 vols., (8),XLV,(1),244; XI,(1),301,(2 publisher's-cat.), 2 identical engraved title-vignettes, contemporary uniform acid-calf, spines gilt with raised bands and 2 contrasting morocco letterpieces, edges stained red, 20,6 x 13,3 cm. = Beautiful copy of the second edition (first: Amsterdam, M.-M. Rey, 1764) of Bonnet's major theoretical work on biology. DSB II, p. 286: "Bonnet is considered one of the fathers of modern biology. He is distinguished for both his experimental research and his philosophy, which exerted a profound influence upon the naturalists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A true theoretician of biology, he exercised an enormous influence in this field and maintained a correspondance with almost alle the scientists of his time. He published works that caused a considerable stir. He was not only a remarkable experimentalist and a theoretician with fertile ideas, he was an instigator of a whole series of fundamental experiments. (...) He was an enthusiastic champion of preformation, the theory postulating that the animal already existed in miniature in the germ cell. His discovery of parthenogenesis was, to him, proof that the female germ cell contains the preformed individual. His theory of "palingenesis" set forth the functional and structural notion of the cell, which was not stated formally until a hundred years later."