Dictionnaire des sciences naturelles by Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville - 1816-30: Planches Zoologie: Conchyliogie et Malacologie

Very good copy of the Shells volume from Cuvier's huge Dictionary of Natural Sciences

Complete with all 114 hand-coloured stipple engraved plates of cephalopods and molluscs, including octopus, squid, shellfish, mussels, cones, cowries, volutes, sea snails, ammonites, nautilus, etc.

All the illustrations by Jean-Gabriel Prêtre, under the direction of Pierre Jean François Turpin, and engraved by Louis Massard, Madame Rebel, Guyard, Bourey, Giraud, Coutant, etc.

Conchyliogie et Malacologie: Title page, 36pp (table of plates, index), 4 engraved plates and 114 handcoloured engraved plates of marine creatures

Part of Cuvier's massive Dictionary of Natural Sciences that was published in 60 text volumes and 13 plate volumes from 1816 to 1830.

Jean-Gabriel Prêtre (1768-1849) was a Swiss-French natural history painter who illustrated a large number of books for Cuvier, Louis Pierre Vieillot, René Primevère Lesson, Comte de Lacépède, Richard Achille, and many other French zoologists.

Pierre Jean François Turpin (1775-1840) was a French botanist and illustrator. He is considered one of the greatest floral and botanical illustrators during the Napoleonic Era and after.

Half brown leather, spine with raised bands and gilt title, leather dry and rubbed, marbled boards and endpapers, book block solid. Stipple engraved plates mostly clean apart from slight spotting to edges, most under tissue guards, but hand-colour vivid and bright.

Very good copy of this increasingly rare series by two giants of natural history illustration.