Zoology

LONDON : George Bell & Sons, 1872 A nice set complete in 4 volumes with 132 hand coloured plates as called for. In green half leather bindings with gilt titles. The marbled boards are matched by the marbled endpapers. Teg. All the volumes have some rubbing to the leather principally at the edges and corners and along the joints. The spines have faded to a sage green colour. All the bindings are sound and tight. The contents have some light spotting in places but are otherwise very nice and clean with good quality plates. Vol I has some foxing to preliminaries and this extends to the frontispiece and title page and some of the blank pages at the end. The remaining contents are in nice clean condition and the plates are tissue guarded. The plate numbering changes from latin to arabic at times. Vol II has some foxing to preliminaries as in Vol I but is generally clean and bright otherwise. Vol III is without a tissue guard to the frontispiece but is clean and bright throughout. Vol IV has some spotting… Read More

LONDON: L REEVE & CO., 1884 Plate volume only. In half leather binding with morocco leather and marbled boards. With 82 finely engraved colour printed plates of butterflies, caterpillars and their food plants. The binding has raised bands to the spine and gilt decoration and titles. It has some scuffing to the spine and wear, and wear to corners, removing the top surface of the leather. With matching marbled endpapers. The front pastedown endpaper has a small hole. The contents have some brown spotting - this mainly affects the initial leaves and early plates, but there is occasional spotting later on. The plates are not tissue guarded so there is some offsetting to the reverse of the preceding plate page. Page edges have browning.

Amstelaedami [Amsterdam] : Henricum Wetstenium, 1686 A good copy of Volume I of the 2 volume latin translation of Redi's classic work, bound in contemporary full vellum. With what appear to be most of the plates from Volume II bound in - having 26 folding plates and 31 single page plates in addition to the decorative frontispiece title page. Redi's work was pivotal in disproving the theory of spontaneous generation. The binding is in very good condition - being slightly grubby and with light wear only. With printed name of T H Longfield on a preliminary. With decorative title page/frontispiece; title page, epistola (7pp); contents page; text (216pp plus plates); index - authorum (6pp); additional index - index rarum notabilium(13pp); title page - De Ave Diomedea Dissertatio...'; section headed B.L.S (2pp); section headed 'Clarissimo viro, D Johanni Danieli Majori, SPD - pp 5-40; and index 'Rerum et Verborum. With decorative initial capitals. The contents are in good clean condition… Read More

Calcutta: Printed by Order of the Trustees of the Indian Museum , 1902 First english edition - translated from the german by Robert Von Lendenfeld. Complete with 23 full page black and white plates. It looks to have been rebound in a good cloth binding fairly recently: the binding is in excellent condition with gilt titles to spine. Internally the endpapers are new. There is a small ink signature to the top of the title page but the contents are otherwise unmarked. There is a little brown spotting to title page and second 'note' page, but the remainder of the text and plates are clean and in very good condition. 113 pages plus plates (each with protective guard). An extremely scarce work.

The Hague: Petrum van Cleef, 1766 A good to very good copy of the first edition of this extremely rare work by the naturalist Peter Simon Pallas (1741-1811). This is one of his earliest works, drawing on collections in Dutch museums. It includes several vertebrates which were at that time unknown to science. Complete with 14 detailed and beautifully executed folding black and white plates drawn by the Dutch artist J J Bylaert, and decorative head and tailpieces. With title page with engraving of an owl, dedication, preface, text and corrigenda (244 pp), and folding plates. The binding is of worn but sound marbled boards with red label to spine (possibly contemporary or slightly later and possibly German/Dutch). All page edges red. Internally there is a little ink inscription to the bottom of the fep and occasional pencil annotation. The first plate has some creasing to the outer margin. There is a slight ink mark at the page edge of p219 which affects the edges of pages through to the first plate.… Read More

LONDON : John and Arthur Arch, 1815 A good copy of the 1st edition of this extremely rare work, with 11 plates, 9 of which are hand coloured. Brookes set out to write for those who wanted to understand Conchology, but who might not have a grounding in natural history. He took care to use english rather than latin names where possible, and to give readers a clear framework for their study. This copy is in a later speckled calf binding with gilt lining and blind stamped decoration to the board edges. The spine has raised bands with gilt lining and gilt stamped decoration. There is a leather title. It is in near fine condition. Page edges are marbled. There is an inked owners name to a preliminary - J Reid Moir. 3rd November 1919 - possibly the Reid Moir who authored 'Antiquity of Man in East Anglia'. The title page has browning and some spotting and an ink mark. The text pages vary between very clean and bright (the majority) to occasional foxing and spotting, to quite heavy foxing in the… Read More

Harper & Brothers. New York. 1885. 8vo. xix, (1), 536, 4pp adverts. Coloured frontispiece of Mrs Forbes Honey Eater with tissue guard, 14 plates, numerous text illustrations including 1 map, 3 coloured folding maps, I coloured map, 1 monochrome map. Original pictorial cloth, gilt and black, slight wear to head of spine. Uniformly toned, a tight crisp copy. Orientalia booksellers plate, New York to rep. A nice copy.
Henry O Forbes (1851-1932) Scottish explorer, zoologist and botanist. Travels and observations in The Cocos-Keeling Islands, Java, Sumatra, Moluccas and Timor-Laut, Buru, Timor etc

London: Printed for Harrison and Co, 1785. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Folio - over 12 - 15" tall. 1st ed. Two volumes in one. Folio ( 14 inches ). Early -mid 20th century half leather and cloth with gilt spine title, marbled end papers. Complete with index, Preface, text and 100 hand colored plates with many individual animals per plate. Very Good, very tight, very slight wear to covers. The hinges have been professionally strengthened with a high quality cloth tape. The text and plates are generally nice and clean save the following: there is a light, old stain at the top of the second blank end paper, title page, index page, preface page, first plate and first page of text ( see photos ). The title page has been backed and has a repair at the bottom fore corner. The first pate has been laid down and has some overall soiling in addition to the top stain. Three early text leaves have some heavy foxing. the rest of the text is clean save some very little foxing here and there or some light… Read More

Quarto (12 by 8 1/4 inches) London: "Printed by Joseph Streater, and are to be Sold by T. Basset, at the George in Fleet-Street. J Robinson, at the Golden Lyon in St. Paul's Church-Yard. B. Ayimer, at the Three Pigeons over against the Royal-Exchange. Job. Southby at the Harrow in Cornhil. And by W. Canning, in the Temple." 1688. (16) 267 (12) & (3) 40 pages.

TWO works bound together, as published, in original full mottled calf, with raised bands and gilt ornaments on spine.
Good condition, with some chipping along outside hinges, but holding; and normal wear to corners. Title page of first part printed in red and black. Lower right corner of title page to second part torn and missing, but not affecting text; and minor old insect damage to lower portion of same; date and other particulars still very readable. Engraved bookplate of Henry Maister (of an early English mercantile family).

There are thirty-one full page engravings of animals in the first part; and five full page engravings of scientific… Read More

Good copy of this beautifully illustrated book of classic fables with realistic animal studiesComplete with 56 etchings, drawn and engraved "from the life" by Samuel Howitt, with title page and list of platesPlate 32, The Dog in the Manger, bound opposite the title page as the frontispieceSamuel Howitt (1756–1822) was an English painter, illustrator and etcher, famous for his scenes with animals, hunting, horse-racing, sporting and landscapes. He is best known for his illustrations to Captain Thomas Williamson's Oriental Field Sports (1807). Other works include Thoughts on Hunting (1798), Miscellaneous Etchings of Animals (1803), British Field Sports (1807); The Angler's Manual (1808), Groups of Animals (1811), The British Sportsman (1812) and Foreign Field Sports (1819).Blue buckram spine, marble boards bumped and darkened, new endpapers, tissue guards, all plates with varying degrees of spotting and foxing, mostly outside the image, one with 10cm tear within image, first 25 plates with small… Read More

Complete set of the 53 copperplate engravings only from this seminal work of microscopy by Jan Swammerdam (1637-1680), the pioneering Dutch biologist. Swammerdam was one of the outstanding comparative anatomists of the seventeenth century. His most remarkable work was in the field of insect anatomy, which he undertook in order to disprove Aristotle's claims that insects lack internal anatomy, develop by metamorphosis and arise from spontaneous generation. By refining his techniques of micro-dissection and injection, Swammerdam was able to illustrate for the first time the complex internal structures of insects, including their reproductive organs.These observations are "indubitably the foundation of our modern knowledge of the structure, metamorphosis and classification of insects" (Cole, p. 285).Biblia naturae, Swammerdam's major work, was published 57 years after his death by Herman Boerhaave, who assembled it from unpublished manuscript materials integrated with a slightly revised version of… Read More

Please excuse our group photo. Just 1 book is offered here: The ABC Bunny BY WANDA GA'G. Coward-McCann 1933 First Edition Twentieth Printing Thus. Good Condition. No DJ. Exlib. Library- bound edition. Hand lettered by Howard Gag. Green boards with red titling in white front center panel in nice condition. Green and white wraparound alphabet wall poster still affixed to binding. WOODCUTS.

Flack, Marjorie. Tim Tadpole and the Great Bullfrog. Copyright 1934, Doubleday & Company, Inc., First Edition. For Young Readers. Used. Good Condition/ Good- condition rare, unclipped $2.50 original dust jacket. . Garden City Park, New York, U.S.A. Beautifully illustrated. Please see our photos. The Story: "Tim Tadpole lived in a small pond at the edge of the wood. All around him the Peeper frogs sang, while the Great Bullfrog croaked and jumped. But Tim couldn't sing and he couldn't jump either. All he could do was to wriggle through the water until the day he made an exciting discovery!" RARE! We consider offers.

Very good copy of the increasingly hard-to-find monograph on the extinct dodo, Raphus cucullatus, and Rodrigues solitaire, Pezophaps solitaria.First edition of this finely illustrated classicComplete in two parts: Part I. History and External Characters of the Dodo, Solitaire and other Extinct Brevipennate Birds by H. E. Strickland, and Part II: Osteology of the Dodo and Solitaire by A.G. Melville. With two hand-coloured lithographs after the famous 17th-century paintings of the dodo by Roelandt SaveryAltogether 18 lithographic illustrations (Numbered I-XV with three bis plates III*, IV*, and IX*) of dodo and solitaire specimens, landscapes, bones, skulls and reconstructions drawn and lithographed by Joseph Dinkel, Tuffen West and Werner, as well as nine woodcuts in the text. With errata slip and 12-page catalogue of new books in rear. Hugh Edwin Strickland (1811-1853) was an English geologist, ornithologist, naturalist and systematist. His works include Outline of the Geology of the Neighbourhood of… Read More

A beautiful copy of Ernst Haeckel's influential book on natural history that married art and science.

Set of the first five (5) parts only.

With 50 beautiful chromolithographed plates in the original printed wrappers and pictorial box.

The 50 fine plates, some printed in colour, chromolithographed by Adolf Giltsch after sketches by Ernst Haeckel.

"First edition of this famous and marvelous work which had a considerable influence on decorative design in the Jugendstil and Art Nouveau period during the beginning of the 20th century and depicts fantastic, real forms and structures found in animal and plant life."

Many artists of the era, such as French glass designers Emile Galle and Rene Lalique, kept a copy of Haeckel's illustrations at home. French architect Rene Binet incorporated forms of Radiolarians in his work on the Porte Monumentale at the 1900 Paris Exposition. Dutch architect Henrick Petrus Berlage designed a chandelier based on Discomedusae jellyfish. German photographer Karl… Read More