(BIRDS) Cassin John Illustrations of the Birds of California

Sale 2450 - Lot 277

Price Realized: $ 3,000

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000

(BIRDS.) Cassin, John. Illustrations of the Birds of California, Texas, Oregon, British and Russian America. 50 tinted lithographed plates finished by hand, viii, 298 pages. Large 8vo, 10 1/2x6 3/4 inches, publisher's full brown morocco elaborately blindstamped, a.e.g., recased with new endpapers, lightly rubbed; minor spotting or browning to text and tissue overlays, plates clean and bright. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., [1853]-1856

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In the preface Cassin traces the cultivation of interest and knowledge of North American natural history after the annexation of Texas and incorporation of California to the Union. He indicates that however revered Audubon, Wilson and other naturalists working in the earlier part of the nineteenth century may have been, there remained an obligation to revise the established ornithological scope which those artists created: "Since the time of the publication of the works of our predecessors in American Ornithology, the additions of species and of information in that department of our Zoology have been very large, and being for much the greater part within our reach, we have induced to undertake the present work. It is to be regarded in some measure as an addition to the works of former authors in American Ornithology, but at the same time complete in itself." Fine Bird Books 85; Nissen IVB 173; Wood p 281.