Martini Lister e Societate regia Londini Historiae animalium Angliae tres tractatus. Unus de araneis. Alter de cochleis tum terrestribus tum fluviatilibus. Tertius de cochleis marinis. Quibus adjectus est quartus de lapidibus ejusdem insulae ad cochlearum quandam imaginem figuratis. Memoriae & Rationi

4to (211x164 mm). [8], 250, [2] pp. and 9 engraved folding plates. Collation: A-Z⁴ Aa-Ii⁴ Kk². Leaf A3 wrongly signed A2. The sections Cochlearum Angliae et terrestrium et fluviatilium liber and Cochlitarum Angliae sive lapidum ad cochlearum quandam imaginem giguratorum liber open with a separate title page respectively at ll. O3 and Cc3. Imprimatur on first leaf verso, errata on last leaf recto. Later cardboards, label with ink title on spine. Some staining and browning, wormholes on the outer blank margin of a few leaves, but all in all a good, genuine copy. Uncut with deckle edges.

First edition. The English physician Martin Lister was the Royal Physician of Queen Anne. The present work was the first monograph dedicated to the mollusks. Lister describes essentially three classes of animals, i.e. spiders, terrestrial and fluvial shells, and marine shells. In the first section he corrects the mistakes of previous authors who wrote on arachnids and deals with their venom and its use in therapy. A classification of British spiders precedes the second chapter of the first part, where the different species of spiders are described according to their aspect and their alimentary habits. The second part contains a general description of terrestrial and fluvial shells and their classification. The largest part of the book though deals with marine shells, to which the nine plates refer. Lister describes extensively both bivalves and gastropods, including however also a sea-urchin among the molluscs. The final section is dedicated to the fossil shells which are found in England.

Nissen ZBI, 2527; Wing, L-2523.

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