Descrizione

Paris, Claude-Antoine Jombert, 1778. 8vo (19.7 x 12.3 cm). Half-title, title page, 349 pp. (xvii, 326, [vii], and 4; 16 with advertisements); 441 engravings on 60 plates. 19th-century half calf over marbled boards. Spine with gilt ornamental lines and title. Marbled endpapers. Speckled edges. = A well-illustrated work on palaeontology by the French polymath Louis Bourguet (1678-1742). This is a rare second, improved and updated edition. The 1742 first edition is definitely more common. The 60 plates show mainly Mesozoic fossils, principally molluscs, and also several corals, echinoderms, brachiopods, etc. In the rear, two Baillière catalogues, one dealing mostly with Deshayes's Description des animaux sans vertèbres; the other, dated 1866, with various natural history titles. Provenance: on the title page an old stamp of the Société des Mines de Nouzilleras, and on the front pastedown a mineralogical bookplate of the French mineralogist and professor at the École des Mines, Claude Jean Guy Guillemin (1923-1994), who was a co-founder of the International Mineralogical Association. Boards a bit rubbed at edges, a few figures shaved due to the irregular plate sizes, front flyleaves replaced. One catalogue trimmed at bottom edge. In all a very good copy. Ward and Carozzi, 283.