Neu-Holland in Europa. Ein Vortrag, gehalten im Ständehause in Winter des Jahres 1861.

Vienna: Wilhelm Braumüller,, 1861. One of the first nature-printed books on Australia First edition of this comparative lecture by a pioneer of paleobotany, arguing for parallels between the living flora of Australia and Eocene fossil plants from Europe. It is distinguished by finely rendered illustrations of fossil leaves printed for Unger by Alois Auer, the leading innovator of nature printing. The Austrian botanist Franz Unger (1800-1870) practised medicine before becoming professor of botany and zoology and director of the botanic garden at Graz (1835-49), then professor of plant anatomy and physiology at Vienna (1850-69). A major pre-Darwinian thinker, he used Humboldtian scientific methods to trace large-scale relationships between environment, species distribution, and geological time, anticipating evolutionary explanation. His wide-ranging teaching and publications - including the landmark Die Urwelt (1851) - influenced figures such as Gregor Mendel. Here Unger proposes a migratory link between Australian and European plants as evidence of Eocene land connection, a claim of priority disputed by Constantin von Ettingshausen. An English translation appeared in the Journal of Botany in 1865 without the original colour illustrations. The plates employ Auer's nature-printing process, which takes direct impressions from natural objects to reproduce texture with exceptional precision. Produced at the Imperial Printing Office in Vienna, the work stands as a notable example of the Naturselbstdrucke technique. Octavo (220 x 145 mm). With 30 botanical illustrations in text, 12 of which black and white engravings and 18 of which nature-printed in brown ink by k.k. Hof- und Staatsdruckerei in Vienna; numerous tables also within text. Contemporary brown cloth, spine lettered in gilt. Cloth a little soiled and worn at extremities, endpapers lightly foxed, contents toned and occasionally spotted, a couple of leaves adhered to following leaf in gutter, some browning and offset from colour printing: a very good copy. Cave, p. 100; Ferguson 17490. Unger's obituary in The Journal of Botany, British and Foreign, nos. 85 & 86, January-February 1870; Sander Gliboff, "Evolution, revolution, and reform in Vienna: Franz Unger's ideas on descent and their post-1848 reception", Journal of the History of Biology, vol. 31, no. 2, 1998, pp. 179-209.