Birds in Nature.

Boston, MA, Estes and Lauriat, 1888. 4to (31.8 x 25.8 cm). Title in red and black, [iii], 78 pp.; 39 mounted chromolithographed plates, and elaborate pictorial woodcut capitals and tailpieces. Original pictorial cloth with polychrome vignette and gilt title on the front board; spine with gilt title, gilt edges and black endpapers. = A sumptuous bird book, written by one of Britain's foremost ornithologists, Richard Bowdler Sharpe (1847-1909), also the principal author of the massive list of ornithological species in the British Museum of Natural History (where he was curator of the birds and augmented the collection from a 'mere 35,000' to nearly a million specimens), and finely illustrated by the Swiss artist - principally bird illustrator - Léo-Paul Samuel Robert (1851-1923). One of a rare, limited edition of only 210 copies, this copy, however, without number. Zimmer states 300 copies, perhaps including those without number. Head and tail of spine with small repair. Some few leaves on which the chromolithographs are mounted very lightly foxed in the margins, the blackbird plate causing some offsetting to the adjacent text leaf, otherwise an excellent, clean copy. Zimmer, p. 579. Neither in Cat. BM(NH), nor in Anker, nor in Nissen IVB and ZBI.