WITH AN AUTOGRAPH LETTER
YARRELL, William.
A History of British Fishes … illustrated by nearly 400 Woodcuts.
London, Samuel Bentley for John van Voorst, 1836.
[bound with:]
YARRELL, William. Supplement to the History of British Fishes … illustrated with Woodcuts, in two Parts. London, Samuel Bentley for John van Voorst, 1839. [and:]
BELL, Thomas. A History of British Reptiles … illustrated by more than forty Woodcuts. London, Samuel Bentley for John van Voorst, 1839.
Three works in two vols, 8vo, pp. I: xxxvii, [1], 408, Supplement (pt i): iv, 48, II: [4], 472, Supplement (pt ii): 72 xxiv, 142, [2 (publisher’s prospectus)]; with a great many woodcut illustrations; slight spots in places and a few instances of offsetting, otherwise an attractive set; contemporary half calf with later nineteenth-century marbled sides, spines gilt in compartments and tooled in blind with gilt red and green morocco lettering-pieces; rubbed, a few scuffs, corners lightly bumped, minor split to upper joint of vol. I; armorial bookplates of Adam Sim, Coulter, to upper pastedowns, with a [2] pp. autograph letter to Sim signed by William Euing bound in, dated ‘Glasgow, 8th Nov. 1853'.
First collected editions, with an autograph letter on the Hebridal smelt from the species’ discoverer. Published serially from 1835 to 1836, Yarrell’s History of British Fishes was reprinted within a year, and followed soon after by Thomas Bell’s British Reptiles in 1839 and his own British Birds in 1843 published by van Voorst and together forming a comprehensive survey of British wildlife. Though noted for his careful observations, Yarrell is here corrected on several points in an autograph letter to the antiquarian Adam Sim (1805–1868) from William Euing (1788–1874), who had discovered the Hebridal smelt (first included in the Supplement) in November 1837 and notes ‘I mean to write to Mr Y. and send him my dried specimen, from which he will be able to rectify the mistakes if the work should go to a second edition’.
Despite this contribution to Scottish ichthyology, Euing, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and President of the Glasgow Archaeological Society, is best remembered for his fine library, of which some twelve thousand volumes now belong to Glasgow University.
