Description
Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon and Bernard-Germain-Étienne, Comte de Lacepede. Naturgeschichte [Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière]. Berlin: Joachim Pauli and others, 1771-1809. Sixty-nine octavo volumes (over seven linear feet). With over 2,000 hand-colored frontispieces, natural history plates, maps, and charts, some fold-out. Numerous additional plates are present but uncolored. Most volumes with hand-colored scenes on the title page. The voluminous number of colored plates include deer, rabbits, owls, turkeys, chickens, wolves, minks, rodents, tigers and other cats, elephants, squirrels, porcupines, armadillos, horned animals, zebras, bats, skunks and other furred animals, monkeys, whales, seals, polar bears, fish, insects, snakes, turtles, frogs, lizards, and hundreds upon hundreds of birds of every stripe, including swans, cranes, ducks, and almost two entire volumes devoted to parrots. Contemporary sheep with gilt spine labels. Marbled endpapers. Overall fairly heavy wear to the bindings. Some boards detached. Some spines and title labels perished or perishing. All with the same unobtrusive ex-library label, sticker, and stamps from the Bibliotheca Mt. St. Alphonsus in Esopus, New York. Light offsetting to some volumes, but overall clean text and plates. A number of the later volumes, after 1800, are attributed to Lacepede. A monumental set in very good condition, better if not for the bindings.
