BOYLE, Robert.
Tractatus … Ubi 1. Mira aëris … rarefactio detecta. 2. Observata nova circa durationem virtutis elasticae aeris expansi. 3. Experimenta nova de condensatione aeris, solo frigore facta; ejusque compressione sine machinis. 4. Ejusdem quantitatis aeris rarefacti & compressi mire discrepans extensio.
London, Henry Herringman, 1671 [but printed abroad?].
[bound with:]
BOYLE, Robert. Tractatus de cosmicis rerum qualitatibus; De cosmicis suspicionibus; De temperie subterranearum regionum; De temperie submarinarum regionum; De fundo maris. Quibis praemittitur introductio ad historiam qualitatum particularium. Accedit denique Tractatus de absoluta quiete in corporibus. Omnia ex anglica in latinam linguam conversi. Amsterdam, Joannes Janssonius van Waesberghe, and Hamburg, Gotffried Schultze, 1671.
Two works bound in one volume, 12mo, Tractatus ubi mira aëris: pp. 71, with a woodcut ornament on the title and woodcut head- and tailpieces; Tractatus de cosmicis rerum qualitatibus: pp. [xii], 60, 40, 42, 64, 30, 24, [3], [1 (blank)], ‘57’ [recte 58], general title printed in red and black, with one woodcut initial; good copies in contemporary calf, spine gilt; extremities rubbed, head of spine slightly chipped, two short splits in upper joint.
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Tractatus … Ubi 1. Mira aëris … rarefactio detecta. 2. Observata nova circa durationem virtutis elasticae aeris expansi. 3. Experimenta nova de condensatione aeris, solo frigore facta; ejusque compressione sine machinis. 4. Ejusdem quantitatis aeris rarefacti & compressi mire discrepans extensio.
I. Second edition, very scarce. The first edition, published the year before, is known in less than half a dozen copies. An English translation also appeared in 1671.
‘This, the briefest of Boyle’s separately published works, contains a series of observations upon the influence of temperature and pressure on the size of air bubbles in water. After arriving at the law of pressures Boyle was quick to appreciate that temperature influenced the state of expansion of a gas. The observations recorded in the present tract were carried out in the year 1662. His deductions are ingenious, and they represent an important step toward the further elucidation of the gas laws’ (Fulton).
II. First Latin edition; first published in English earlier the same year. This is the issue with the added essay ‘De absoluta quiete in corporibus’, first published in English (‘Absolute rest in bodies’) in the second edition of Certain physiological essays (1669).
‘In the first tract of the present collection – a sequel to Formes and Qualities – Boyle deals with possible objections to his doctrine concerning the nature of matter ... . The view set forth in this essay is ... considerably in advance of that elucidated in the Sceptical Chymist or in ‘Formes and Qualities’ and it may well be looked upon as one of the important milestones in the history of the theories of chemical combination. The tract incidentally contains further observations on the change of colour of vegetable extracts when their reaction is changed from acid to alkali’ (Fulton).
I. Fulton 91A (the variant without the line ‘Juxta Exemplar impressum’ in the title); USTC 3089576; Wing B4052. The Cambridge University Library online catalogue plausibly postulates ‘Imprint false? Probably printed abroad’. Krivatsy 1691 records the first edition.
II. Fulton 87, noting a copy belonging to Geoffrey Keynes (now in Cambridge University Library) which had the Tractatus ubi mira aëris bound in before N1 as in our copy; USTC 1807752; VD17 3:622726G. This edition not in Krivatsy.
