Jun 07, 2017 - Sale 2450

Sale 2450 - Lot 310

Price Realized: $ 16,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 10,000 - $ 15,000
(NATURAL HISTORY.) Shaw, George; and Nodder, Frederick Polydore. The Naturalist's Miscellany: or Coloured Figures of Natural Objects; Drawn and Described Immediately from Nature. 1064 hand-colored engraved plates on Whatman paper, engraved dedication plate, engraved plate of Shaw's tomb, complete with all dedicatory title-pages and indices in Latin and English. 24 volumes bound in 12. Large 8vo, 9x5 1/2 inches, uniform nineteenth century 1/2 pebbled morocco gilt, extremities rubbed, a few hinges starting; scattered offsetting and foxing, several plates mis-numbered or mis-bound, plate 23 split at fold, plate 202 small repaired tear, plate 359 small corner loss, plate 409 printer's crease, plate 976 small closed tear; title of final volume with ink stamp of the Royal College of Surgeons of England; bookplates of Harry L. Stevens. London: Nodder, [1789]-1813

Additional Details

rarely offered complete: The Naturalist's Miscellany, a vast compendium of natural history issued in 287 monthly parts over a period of nearly 24 years. The wonderful plates of birds, animals, reptiles, insects and sea creatures are engraved after the work of Frederick Nodder and his son Richard. British naturalist George Shaw's important early descriptive text in Latin and English offered some of the earliest scientific descriptions of several Australian species to the field of natural history. New discoveries include plate 93, the Nonpareil Parrot: "This bird is a species hitherto undescribed; having been very lately brought from New Holland" and plates 385/386, the Duck Billed Platypus: "The animal exhibited on the present plate constitutes a new and singular genus… of all the Mammalia yet known it seems the most extraordinary in its conformation… I ought perhaps to acknowledge that I almost doubt the testimony of my own eyes with respect to the structure of the animal's beak". The collection amassed by Nodder and Shaw is a remarkable early contribution to the study and science of natural history. Fine Bird Books 142; Nissen IVB 869; Wood 565.