Histoire naturelle des mammifères, avec les figures originales, coloriées, dessinées d'après des animaux vivans. Bovinés - Bovines - Rinder.

Paris, A. Belin, 1819-1825. Large folio (approximately 53 x 35 cm). Seven hand-coloured lithographed plates with explanatory text leaves. Not bound, as issued. = A magnificent publication with fine large plates of mammals from all over the world. The authors, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772-1844) and Fréderic Cuvier (1769-1832) were the leading authorities in mammalogy in the first half of the 19th century, and the "Histoire naturelle des mammifères" is widely regarded as their magnum opus. From this work, these are the bovines, including wild and domesticated species. The following are included: Le Bison d'Amérique (Bison bison, or North American buffalo, a young cow, an adult bull, and a one month old calf, on three different plates); Le Buffle (Bos bubalus, the Italian buffalo of mozzarella fame); Jungly-Gau, femelle, and mâle (two plates of Bos sylhetanus, a wild Asian bovine or gaur, described here by Cuvier); and the Zébu femelle (Bos indicus; a zebu cow, the figured animal was from India). All as issued, without stamps, annotations or other markings. All text leaves, and all plates uncut, untrimmed, resulting in very big margins. Due to these large margins some edges a bit frayed or with minor tears. The plates are hardly spotted if at all, some text leaves are somewhat spotted but mainly in the margins. Generally this set is in a very good condition. Brunet II, p. 1,536; Nissen ZBI, 1525; Wood, p. 354.