GRAY, George Robert (1808-1872). Descriptions and Figures of some new lepidopterous insects, chiefly from Nepal. London: E. Newman for Longman, Brown, Green & Longman, 1846.

GRAY, George Robert (1808-1872). Descriptions and Figures of some new lepidopterous insects, chiefly from Nepal. London: E. Newman for Longman, Brown, Green & Longman, 1846.

8° (215 x 132mm). 16 plates, 14 hand-coloured engraved plates by Waterhouse Hawkins 10 after Hayes, 2 uncoloured lithographs. (Plates 5,9 and 13 shaved with loss to plate number, the lithographic plates spotted.) 19th-century red roan-backed marbled paper-covered boards (spine chipped at head and foot).

RARE. The plates for this work were prepared in 1833 from drawings in the collection of Major-General Thomas Hardwicke (1755-1835). The work itself was intended to be the first part of a larger work with sections on the ornithology of China, the spiders of Nepal, the fungi of Nepal, etc. - only the present work was ever published. BM(NH) II,p.711 (calling for 15 plates); Horn-Schenkling 8390; Nissen ZBI 1685 (15 plates).