Second enlarged edition, folio (395 x 240 mm), iv, 110pp., printed in double-column, engraved portrait and 24 engraved plates on 13 sheets, recent quarter red morocco, new marbled endpapers, spine with five raised bands ruled in gilt, lettered direct in gilt in second and third compartments, a fine copy with some minor browning and offsetting from the plates. Richard Pulteney (1730-1801) was principally known as a botanist, but started out life apprenticed for seven years to an apothecary in his local town of Loughborough, Leicestershire. After which he practised as a surgeon and apothecary at Leicester; but he met with little success owing to his nonconformist convictions. He eventually secured a practice as physician at Blanford, Dorset, and occupied his leisure time with the study of botany, conchology, etc. He became a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1790 and bequeathed to them his museum and herbarium. First published in 1799 in a limited number, many of which were destroyed by a fire at Nichols' warehouse in 1808. This second enlarged edition, edited with additions by Reckett, was the first to be illustrated. A republication of Da Costa's Historia naturalis testaceorum Britanniae 1778 plates, with six additional ones, omitting some of Da Costa's figures, and inserting others, corresponding with the locality of the subject. The plates contain about 230 figures of British shells, and the letter-press gives a brief description of them. Nissen ZBI, 3250.
