Rare original edition of the thesis ("Habitilation thesis"), previously published as an article in the journal Abhandlungen der k.k. geologischen Reichsanstalt in the same year 1852 by Lukas Friedrich Zekeli (1823-1881), a paleontologist teaching at the University of Vienna. Zekelis career as a paleontologist started after the two troubled years of revolution in 1850 at the k. k. Geologische Reichsanstalt (Imperial Geological Survey of Austria). He soon became a private lecturer due to his ambitions and idealism. This habilitation thesis Die Gasteropoden der Gosau-Gebilde (The Gastropods of the Gosau Beds), his main work, won broad recognition.
Spine and corners are damaged, some pages (such as the title-page) are browned, some foxing throughout, ownerships stamp of Carl Faber, Gosau, Oberösterreich (South-east of Salzburg) - a son of the Austrian industrialist Moritz Faber (1837-1921) who built a villa in Gosau - on the first flyleaf. A rare original edition of this thesis with detailled lithographed illustrations of shells. cf. Patrick Grunert, Lukas Friedrich Zekeli. Leben und Werk eines nahezu vergessenen Pioniers des paläontologischen Unterrichts in Österreich, in: Jahrb. d. Geol. Bundesanstalt, 146 (2006), pp. 195-215.