Schreiben des Herrn Ignatz von Born ... an Herrn Franz Grafen von Kinsky ... ueber einen ausgebrannten Vulkan bey der Stadt Eger in Böhmen

Prag [Prague]: bey Wolfgang Gerle,. Very Good-. 1773. First Edition. Softcover. 16 pages; Unbound (possibly extracted from a volume). Very light soiling to the title page and final page. Ignaz von Born [1742-1791] was a mineralogist and metallurgist, who became a significant figure in botany, and other branches of natural history. He was also a prominent freemason, (whose writing influenced Mozart, both as a mason, and as a major source for the structure and intellectual foundations of "The Magic Flute." Indeed, some writers suggest that Born was the inspiration for the role of Sarastro). Born was also a satirist, and an influential anti-clerical writer. Wikipedia calls Born "the leading scientist in the Holy Roman Empire during the 1770s in the age of Enlightenment." He was born into a noble family, in the Grand Principality of Transylvania. He was educated in a Jesuit college in Vienna, but left the Jesuits after sixteen months to study law at Prague University. After extensive travels to study mineralogy throughout Germany, the Netherlands and France, and a second trip through Hungary and Transylvania, he returned to Prague in 1770 entered the department of mines and the mint. At Prague, where he held a post as mining councillor, Born was active among the founders of a scientific society. In 1771, Born was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (which he mentions on the title page to the work offered here). In 1776 he was summoned to Vienna by the Empress Maria Theresa to arrange the natural history collections, which he afterwards described in a superb (and expensive) book -- ['Testacea Musei Caesarei Vindobonensis' 1780]. Despite all this activity, Ignaz von Born remained an active and important force in mineralogy and the cutting edge methods of mining and metalurgy. His last work was an important contribution, detailing his invention of an amalgamation process for removing gold and silver from various ores, without the expensive and dangerous necessity for melting down the ores -- ['Ueber das Anquicken der gold- und silberhältigen Erze ...' 1786]. His avid pursuit of knowledge in the field may have been a contributing factor to his death at a relatively young age. The DSB states that "During his visit to a mine at Felso-Banya, he descended into the mine too soon after fires used to detach the ore had been extinguished, and inhaled a dangerously large quantity of arsenical vapors" Conspiracy-minded modern writers, knowing that Ignaz von Born was one of the most important members of the Illuminati in Vienna, may have other interpretations of Born's demise. Poggendorff i, col. 242; DSB ii, 316. The present work is quite scarce. See OCLC Number: 77229735 -- [specifying six locations, only one (University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign) in the USA. There are also copies in the British Library, and in the Library of the Univ. of Basel, under separate OCLC numbers. Bornite, a sulfide mineral also known as peacock ore, is named in his honor. .