D'AMBOINSCHE RARITEITKAMER, BEHELZENDE EENE BESCHRYVINGE VAN ALLERHANDE ZOO WEEKE ALS HARDE SCHAALVISSCHEN, TE WEETEN RARE KRABBEN, KREEFTEN, EN DIERGELYKE ZEEDIEREN . . . DIE MEN IN D'AMBOINSCHE ZEE VIND . . . by Rumphius, Georgius Everhardus [i.e. Georg Eberhard Rumpf] - 1705

Amsterdam: François Halma, 1705. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good. Folio. [32],340,[44] pp. plus 50 numbered plates, engraved title, and portrait (52 plates total). Half title. Antique-style calf, raised bands, gilt leather labels. Two institutional inkstamps, including deaccession stamp, in lower margin of main title page, not affecting text. Most shells and carapaces in the plates captioned with species names in a neat hand (late 18th or 19th-century - most names are Linnaean). Faint dampstain in upper-outer corner of leaves A-B2 and plates I-VI and closed tear (repaired) in upper margin of plate XLI and leaves Q4 and R, neither affecting text or images. Some marginal wrinkling, light scattered foxing, and a few minor stains, but generally clean and bright. Very good.

First edition of the first large-scale work on South Pacific mollusks, with substantial content on minerals and other specimens of natural history, the Ambonian Cabinet of Curiosities by Georg Eberhard Rumpf (1607-1702). Rumpf, a German-born Dutch naturalist, was stationed for many years with the Dutch East India Company on the island of Ambon in present-day Indonesia. After losing his sight to glaucoma, he worked primarily from touch, as depicted in the famous portrait in the present volume. Many of the books exquisite plates are believed to have been engraved after drawings by the great scientific illustrator, Maria Sybilla Merian (1647-1717).