Saint pierre

réf. 74557 — Paris F. Klincksieck 1855. Folio 43.2 x 30.4 cm. Half-title title page viii 12 pp.; 12 lithographed plates of which six colour-printed. Contemporary blind quarter vellum over marbled boards. Marbled endpapers. Speckled edges. = A seldom-seen work by the French botanist Ernest Germain de Saint-Pierre 1814-1882. The illustrations by the author are well-executed and finely detailed. The second suite of six plates is printed in colour. This publication was never completed. The plates remained unnumbered. The text stops mid-sentence on page 12. With author's dedication to Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire which he called the Goethe of France and Goethe which he called the German Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire!. The preface is dated December 1855 so publication may have run into 1856. OCLC reports just seven copies in all of which five in France four in Paris and two in the U.S.A. Boards a bit rubbed at edges; one plate with some very light spotting otherwise very good clean and unmarked. Pritzel 3290. Neither in Nissen BBI nor in Stafleu and Cowan. hardcover