BRISSON (Mathurin-Jacques)
Ornithology, or method containing the division of birds into orders, sections, genera, species and their varieties. To which has been appended an exact description of each species, with quotations from the authors who have dealt with them, the names they have given them, those given to them by the various nations, and the common names.
Paris, Cl. Jean-Baptiste Bauche, 1760.
4 volumes in-4 in full marbled calf binding, spines decorated, marbled edges (Binding of the period).
Volumes I, III, IV and V (volumes II and VI are missing)
First edition of this important treatise on ornithology, illustrated by François-Nicolas Martinet and enriched with intaglio figures.
The work, dedicated to the Duke of Burgundy, is printed in French and Latin on two columns.
The illustrations include 261 fold-out plates depicting more than 500 species of birds, as well as a title-frontispiece repeated in each volume, all drawn and engraved in intaglio by Martinet, ten years before Buffon's Histoire naturelle des oiseaux, which he illustrated himself.
(Rubbing, spines split, corners damaged, missing, binding boards damaged)
Nissen IVB, n°145 - Anker, n°69 - Zimmer, 94 - Ronsil, n°391.
