The Butterflies of Europe described and figured: Rhopalocera Europae descripta et delineata. Vol. I (Text) - II (Plates)

Description:

Originally published in parts 1881-1884. Henry Charles Lang (d.1909) was vicar of All Saints Church, Southend and was an authority on the Lepidoptera of the Palaearctic region, In an obituary published in the Ent. Mon. Mag, 1910 Vol. 46 this work was described as 'the most useful and indeed the only complete work of its kind in our language'. It is illustrated with more than eight hundred coloured figures, drawn, mostly from nature, under the direction of the author. Fine chromolithographic plates by Horace Knight, printed by West, Newman & Co.

Nissen ZBI 2374.

Condition

2 vols (Text + Plates), large 8vo, cont. brown half morocco, raised bands to spine, gt titles and tooling to compartments, cloth boards, top edge gilt. Some foxing to text volume, heavier to prelims; plates largely clean, with only occasional light foxing. A few marginal pencil annotations. Pocket at rear of text volume includes an offprint from The Entomologist LVI (1923): 157-161, by G.H. Gurney 'Lepidoptera at Guethary, basses Pyrenees', with two small b/w photographs of caterpillars, one of a mountainous landscape, and a nature print (upper- and underside) of a Small Heath butterfly (Coenonympha pamphilus). A fine, attractively bound set.