Beschreibung
Hardcover. Leather spine. Marbled paper over boards. Appears to be a mid-19th century binding on the mid-18th century book. Gold lettering and decorations chipped, as is the leather. Text block good and tight and square. Pages clean, with only minor foxing. First page present in the title page - there is no half title and there are no blank pages as the front. 2 very nice folding engravings of birds at the rear. 28 un-numbered pages of preface and frontis-matter followed by 411 numbered pages. Text entirely in Latin. This copy has been expertly and meticulously annotated in a neat 18th century hand. Small strips of paper with additions and modifications have been tipped in in the appropriate places (more than 30 of these). Names have been crossed out and re-written (for example, on page 130, the name Scarabaeus has been crossed out and "Melolontha" written in -- in this case reassigning this particular beetle to a different family -- there are dozens, perhaps hundreds of similar changes, all in Latin. In some instances, there are additional notes as well, all done as neatly and scientifically as you could hope. Unfortunately, there is no ownership name in matching ink to hint at who the annotator might have been. There is a name signed on the inside front cover in bluish ink, but it is something different, much more recent. The Swedish edition (this one) of Linnaeus' Natural History of Sweden is scarce - I find copies only at Harvard and a Danish library - although there is a London edition from the same year. Linnaeus was not yet 40 when this was published, though his great Systema Naturae was published nearly 10 years earlier. Linnaeus's system of classification, which is still in use today, was one of the singular great achievements of the Enlightenment. The neat divisions of all living creatures into families, species, classes, etc. set off a frenzy of identification and classification, collection and presentation that has scarcely subsided to this day. This title lists 1,351 species of birds, mammals, plants, shellfish and more, starting with Humans and ending with Lepas and Microcosmus (forms of barnacles and sea squirts) + an appendix with 6 more species. 1 page addenda, descriptions of the plates and index. It could be reasonably argued that this was the first organized field guide & this copy is particularly nice in having hundreds of annotations that show that it was used (every page) and updated. Please email with questions or to request photos. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers S-114
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