Descrizione

square 12mo [17 x 14 cm]; xvi, 327, [viii, publisher's ads] pp, 20 hand colored plates (complete), with frontispiece (hand colored). original pictorial gilt cloth with gilt picture of turtle on front cover, gilt lettering and decoration on spine, light wear on edges, gilt bright, 2 leaves with tear in margin, very good+, interior clean & unmarked. A picture of this book is available up British Museum Natural History Catalogue 1981. Freeman 3496. The author was an important marine biologist of his day. This work, published just three years after the first book devoted to the newly invented aquarium was published by Gosse, is indicative of the fashion of the day to collect natural history objects and display them in one's home. In this case ecologies were established using various live sea creatures, both plants and animals, usually collected personally at the sea shore. The author, a noted conchologist and zoologist, describes the construction and maintenance of the aquarium and the type of creatures to collect.