British Fresh-Water Fishes
William MacKenzie, 1879.
First edition. Two volumes, folio. Original brown pebble-grained cloth with titles and elaborate piscatorial decoration stamped in gilt and black. Bevelled edges. All edges gilt. Original advertising leaflet for Cassell's Picturesque America loosely laid in. Forty-one large chromolithographic plates 'drawn from nature' by A.F. Lydon. Numerous further steel engraved chapter headpieces. A near fine set. Externally in remarkably nice condition, clean and bright with with only a very short closed tear to the head of the second volume's spine. Some foxing internally, particularly to preliminary and title pages.
Houghton, a Shropshire clergyman, aimed his book at the fisherman rather than the naturalist, and the text (of which there is, unusually, plenty) gives information about recognition, feeding and breeding habits, habitat, bait and so on. (Buchanan - Nature into Art)
Stock ID: 40926
£1,950.00
