Details
WALCOTT, John (d.1831). Synopsis of British Birds. London: W.Justins for the author, sold by White & son and others, 1789.
2 volumes in one, 4° (212 x 175mm). 255 hand-coloured half-page engraved plates by P.Mazell after Walcott, each with letterpress description beneath. (Light dampstaining to lower half of about 2/3 of the work.) Contemporary half calf (rebacked, old spine laid down). Provenance: J.Walcott (armorial bookplate "I.Walcott"); W.H.Mullens (armorial bookplate); Frank Charles Minoprio (armorial bookplate).
THE AUTHOR'S COPY OF THE FIRST EDITION. "The work is very rare with the plates coloured; one such, Walcott's own copy, is in the W.[estfield] P.[lace] L.[ibrary]" (Mullens and Swann). Loosely inserted is a 9pp. typed index. Walcott, in the preface, states that the "following Work contains the description and manners of nearly all our British birds, with a figure of each, copied by the Author from nature. He procured two hundred of them by his own industry; the rest were drawn from others in a state of high preservation, in the Museums of Mr.Parkinson and Mr.Latham... He has also to confess, that the descriptions of such Birds as were drawn in the above-mentioned Museums, were taken from Mr.Latham's valuable work, "The General Synopsis of Birds."... A very few plates, marked with an asterisk, were copied from Brisson, and others." The plate of the Crested Tit is generally allowed to be the first British record of the bird: "This bird has been lately observed in Scotland, once in a considerable flock". Mullens and Swann p.607; Nissen IVB 966; Zimmer p.660.
2 volumes in one, 4° (212 x 175mm). 255 hand-coloured half-page engraved plates by P.Mazell after Walcott, each with letterpress description beneath. (Light dampstaining to lower half of about 2/3 of the work.) Contemporary half calf (rebacked, old spine laid down). Provenance: J.Walcott (armorial bookplate "I.Walcott"); W.H.Mullens (armorial bookplate); Frank Charles Minoprio (armorial bookplate).
THE AUTHOR'S COPY OF THE FIRST EDITION. "The work is very rare with the plates coloured; one such, Walcott's own copy, is in the W.[estfield] P.[lace] L.[ibrary]" (Mullens and Swann). Loosely inserted is a 9pp. typed index. Walcott, in the preface, states that the "following Work contains the description and manners of nearly all our British birds, with a figure of each, copied by the Author from nature. He procured two hundred of them by his own industry; the rest were drawn from others in a state of high preservation, in the Museums of Mr.Parkinson and Mr.Latham... He has also to confess, that the descriptions of such Birds as were drawn in the above-mentioned Museums, were taken from Mr.Latham's valuable work, "The General Synopsis of Birds."... A very few plates, marked with an asterisk, were copied from Brisson, and others." The plate of the Crested Tit is generally allowed to be the first British record of the bird: "This bird has been lately observed in Scotland, once in a considerable flock". Mullens and Swann p.607; Nissen IVB 966; Zimmer p.660.