Monograph of the British Aphides

Description:

George Bowdler Buckton (1818 - 1905) was assistant to August Wilhelm von Hofmann (1818-1892) at the Royal College of Chemistry in London and was a keen entomologist. The introduction states “when the subject of the British Aphides was pressed on the attention of the Author by an old friend and competent Entomologist, it was believed that what had to be said could be comprised in a small compass…the anticipated single volume has considerably swelled its dimensions’, and was published in four volumes. To illustrate the work Buckton used a camera lucida and used ‘living insects only for figuring’ which were ‘generally first stupefied with vapour of chloroform’ to produce a series of fine lithographic plates.

Condition

4 vols, 8vo, orig. cloth, gilt (some minor wear; labels removed from spines). Vg ex-lib. set with only a few small neat ink stamps (not to plates). Author's inscription to the British botanist and entomologist, Rev. Francis Augustus Walker (1841-1905) to endpaper. Book-plate of the British entomologist Herbert Druce (1846-1913).