[Rarebooks] FS: Important Botanical Study of Egypt, 1735, with 102 copper engravings

[Charles Agvent]

ALPINUS, Prospero; VESLINGIUS, Joannes. HISTORIAE AEGYPTI NATURALIS PARS 
PRIMA. Qua continentur rerum AEgyptiarum libri quatuor. Opus postumum, 
nunc primum ... editum. (Pars secunda, sive, De plantis AEgypti liber 
auctus et emendatus ... Cum observationibus & notis Joannis Veslingii 
... Accedunt ejusdem J. Veslingii paræneses ad rem herbariam & vindiciæ 
opobalsami. Lugduni Batavorum: Gerardum Potvliet, 1735. Small quarto (6" 
x 8") in contemporary vellum. Two volumes bound in one. Illustrated with 
102 copper-engraved plates, 50 of animals and 72 of plants. RERUM 
AEGYPTIARUM [xx], 248, (12) pages. PLANTIS AEGYPTI [viii], 306, [24] 
pages. Two plates from part one misbound in the second, plant part, but 
it makes sense since these are botanical plates. (Hunt 164, Nissen 20 
for Plantis Aegypti). This work combines two of Alpinus’s major 
contributions from his exploration to Egypt as physician and avid 
naturalist. The first part of this work is published here for the first 
time and is often referred to as Rerum AEgyptiarum. Alpinus had received 
his training in medicine at Padua and eventually became director of the 
Botanical Garden. His meticulous and copious notes and collections that 
he made wherever he touched ground during his travels to and in Egypt 
resulted in a number of publications. This is the third, which deals 
with botany as well as natural history of animals. Although the 
botanical information here, the first scientific study of Egyptian 
plants, was first published in 1592, the present posthumous work has 
been supplemented with notes and observations of Veslingi. (Pritzel, 
113) Some mold spotting to the rear board which lightly affects a few of 
the rear pages. A little wrinkling to the pages but generally a clean 
copy with crisp plates. Near Fine. (#010042) $3,500.00

See an image here:

http://home.ptd.net/~chagvent/010042.jpg

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