Details
BELON, Pierre. L'histoire de la nature des oyseaux, avec leurs descriptions, & nafs portraicts retirez du naturel. Paris: Benoist Prevost for Gilles Corrozet, 1555.
2o (301 x 203 mm). Woodcut printer's device on title and sectional titles, woodcut portrait of Belon on title verso, two woodcuts of human and bird skeletons and 158 large woodcuts in text of birds by Pierre Gourdelle and others, numerous 11-line and smaller ornamental woodcut initials and head-pieces. (Marginal stain at gutter on title-page, tear repaired on a6 crossing a few lines, a few headlines shaved, some occasional pale spotting.) Modern reverse calf, tooled in the antique style.
Provenance: "Louis de Barrier physicien," inscription on title dated 1602; mounted slip (apparently a fragment of original endpaper) on front pastedown (possibly in de Barrier's hand), one leaf of manuscript at front and 27 leaves at end in a late 16th- or early 17th-century hand (possibly de Barrier's); early signature on title (illegible); early annotations giving Italian bird names below printed identifications on a few illustrations.
FIRST EDITION, Corrozet issue. One of the first ornithological texts based on direct observation and illustrated from original drawings. "Belon described approximately 230 species (including the bat), most of them European, but including some foreign species observed from his sojourns in Asia Minor and Egypt" (Norman) Though much of this work is based on Aristotle and Pliny, Belon provided many novel observations as to the appearance, habits and distribution of birds. In addition, he mad an important and original contribution to comparative anatomy by comparing in detail the skeletons of birds and man an showing them to be fundamentally identical in structure.
This copy with date on title-page altered in manuscript to 1558. Mortimer mentions that the two Harvard copies (Corrozet issue) have been changed by hand to 1565; and the BM records a copy in which the date has been altered to 1585.
Anker pp. 9-10; BM/STC French p. 46; Garrison-Morton 283 (Cavellat issue); Harvard/Mortimer French 50; Nissen IVB 86; Norman 180.
2
Provenance: "Louis de Barrier physicien," inscription on title dated 1602; mounted slip (apparently a fragment of original endpaper) on front pastedown (possibly in de Barrier's hand), one leaf of manuscript at front and 27 leaves at end in a late 16th- or early 17th-century hand (possibly de Barrier's); early signature on title (illegible); early annotations giving Italian bird names below printed identifications on a few illustrations.
FIRST EDITION, Corrozet issue. One of the first ornithological texts based on direct observation and illustrated from original drawings. "Belon described approximately 230 species (including the bat), most of them European, but including some foreign species observed from his sojourns in Asia Minor and Egypt" (Norman) Though much of this work is based on Aristotle and Pliny, Belon provided many novel observations as to the appearance, habits and distribution of birds. In addition, he mad an important and original contribution to comparative anatomy by comparing in detail the skeletons of birds and man an showing them to be fundamentally identical in structure.
This copy with date on title-page altered in manuscript to 1558. Mortimer mentions that the two Harvard copies (Corrozet issue) have been changed by hand to 1565; and the BM records a copy in which the date has been altered to 1585.
Anker pp. 9-10; BM/STC French p. 46; Garrison-Morton 283 (Cavellat issue); Harvard/Mortimer French 50; Nissen IVB 86; Norman 180.