BRUECKMANN, Franz Ernst.
De Cervo Volante et eius Hybernaculo.
Wolfenbüttel, [for the author], 1739
4to, pp. 12, with 1 engraved plate; a large copy in very good condition and bound in contemporary marbled wrappers.
First and only edition of the earliest monograph on the stag beetle. The fine plate shows the insect in all its glory, also his winter quarters in the trunk of an oak tree.
Franz Ernst Brueckmann (1697-1753) was a physician at Braunschweig and Wolfenbüttel who was also an avid collector and assembled a fine cabinet containing minerals, fossils, natural history objects, scientific instruments, and curiosities. He travelled widely in the German speaking lands and wrote a number of essays, styled travelling letters (epistola itineraria), on topics he was interested in, some also discussing fellow collectors and their collections. These epistolae were issued separately and privately printed for the author. This is epistola itineraria 78. Brueckmann was a member of the Berlin Academy and the Leopoldian academy at Vienna.
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The Gardens and Menagerie of the Zoological Society delineated … Vol. I: Quadrupeds [– Vol. II: Birds].
First edition, second issue, of the first record of the menagerie of the Zoological Society. Founded in 1826 with botanical gardens and a zoological collection at Regent’s Park, the Zoological Society of London was soon established as the foremost natural history collection in Europe, receiving the Royal Menagerie from William IV in 1831.
THORNTON, Robert John, HENDERSON (illustrator), and Thomas BEWICK (engraver).
A new Family Herbal, or a popular Account of the Natures and Properties of the various Plantes used in Medicine, Diet, and the Arts … the Plants drawn from Nature … and engraved on Wood.
First edition of Thornton’s educational herbal, illustrated by Bewick. Though principally famous for his ‘visually magnificent failure’ the Temple of Flora (ODNB), Robert John Thornton (1768 – 1837) wrote on botany for all audiences, from treatises on Linnaeus’s system to the New Family Herbal, offering illustrated descriptions of plants and their medicinal uses.