La Premiere [Seconde] Partie de l'Histoire entiere des Poissons

Description:

Composé premierement en Latin par maistre Guilaume Rondelet Docteur regent en Medecine en l'université de Mompelier. Maintenant traduite en François sans avoir rien omis estant necessaire à l'intelligence d'icelle. Avec leurs pourtraits au naïf.

First edition in French, translated from the original Latin edition (1554-55) by Laurent Joubert. A rare copy of one the earliest ichthyological monographs with beautiful wood engravings by Georges Reverdy (fl. 1529-1565), French engraver and book illustrator, documented in Lyon 1529-57. Describes and illustrates freshwater and marine fish, mammals (such as whales, dolphins, seals, and beavers), molluscs, zoophytes, amphibians and reptiles, as well as sea monsters.

Guillaume Rondelet (1507-1566) was French naturalist and physician who contributed substantially to the field of marine and freshwater biology. His work on fishes was one of the first great monographic works of modern biology. Rondelet was a friend of a fellow physician, François Rabelais, who later wrote 'La vie de Gargantua et Pantagruel' in which Rondelet featured as 'Rondibilis', a physician who gave Panurge advice on marriage. On a visit to Rome, Rondolet met the great naturalist, Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605), and it has been suggested Rondolet, fifteen years older than Aldrovandi, may have inspired the Italian naturalist with an interest in fishes.

Condition

2 title pages with woodcut printer’s device, woodcut portrait of the author at end of preliminaries of each part, c. 420 text engravings. Two parts bound in one volume, 4to, nineteenth-century calf, blind-stamped rules and central design to boards, rubbed/scuffed, teg, fore edges of the first and second parts tinted red and yellow respectively. Some light water-staining (mostly marginal); the final three leaves of index to the second part with neatly repaired tear to the upper margin, with loss of a few words of text. A few marginal annotations in French (possibly contemporary). Later large bookplate of William Stirling, with family motto 'Gang Forward' to front pastedown. Later blank leaf bound at rear of second part with manuscript notes in English concerning observations on an 'insect' (actually a parasitic isopod, the tongue-eating louse) found in the mouths of fish in theYork river, Virginia. It is interesting to note that a paper, 'A Drawing and Description of the Clupea Tyrannus and Oniscus Praegustator', by Benjamin Henry Latrobe, containing text very similar to this was published in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. V, 1802. A very good copy.