103. BUCHOZ'S RARE WORK ON NATURAL HISTORY WITH ALL 400 PLATES, 1775-81, 2 vols.

BUCHOZ, PIERRE JOSEPH (1731-1807). Premiere (-Seconde) Centurie de planches enluminées et non enluminées representative au naturel .. parmi les animaux, les vegetaux et les mineralsaux. Paris, Lacombe et chez l'auteur (parts 1-4) and Amsterdam, Marc-Michel Rey, (parts 5-20) (1775)-1781.

Large folio, c. 495 x 315 mm.
With 20 engraved titles (in red, blue, ochre, black or greyish blue), 400 copper-engraved plates (20 series of 10 plates, each in uncoloured and in hand-coloured state) and 19 engraved explanatory text leaves (complete with all plates and titles; first title with faint fold, 1 title with some inkspots; 5 plates with minor spotting, a few plates with very minor spots to margin, 1 faint dampstain; 1 tear to 1 tissue-paper, all 80 plates in color in the second volume with later (20th century) manuscript explanatory text underneath).
Contemporary full mottled calf bindings, partly worn and rubbed, inner gilt dentelles, inner marbled doblures and endpapers, richly gilt spines with two dark red title labels in compartments, upper corners partly bumped, red edges.

These volumes come from a Swedish collection in the southeast of Sweden and have been in Sweden for more than 100 years.

2 volumes.

Goblin, Bot. 283. - Goblin, Zool. 651 Note - Nissen, Vogelbücher 156. - Anchor 73. - Sitwell/Buchanan pp. 82.

First edition of this remarkable illustrative work of natural history by the famous physician and botanist Pierre-Joseph Buchoz (1731-1807). With the most interesting phenomena from the animal and plant kingdom, both parts complete in itself.
The plates are engraved by Desmoulins, Fessard, Vangelisti, Bacquoy,, Dupin fils and others after Desmoulins and G. de Favane. The titles engraved by Niquet.
Buchoz's Centuries were issued in 20 parts or decades, each containing 20 plates depicting curiosities from one of the 3 kingdoms, animal, vegetable and mineral, totaling 60 botanical plates, 60 plates of fossils, minerals and rocks, and 80 zoological plates including 26 of birds.

"This collection --- contains figures of the rarest, most remarkable, and most interesting phenomena of the three kingdoms of nature, each part being devoted to one of them" (Anker).