The Coleoptera of the British Islands. Vol. I-VI

Description:

The rare illustrated, large paper edition, but with plates uncoloured (200 of the plates are usually hand-coloured).

Condition

6 vols, roy. 8vo, professionally rebound in recent quarter morocco, raised bands, red leather title pieces. Some foxing at beginning and end of several vols. Plates clean. Withdrawn from Hastings Museum library: small neat ink stamps to title pages, verso of plates, and occasionally elsewhere. Good set in attractive binding. Tipped in to Vol. I is a hand-written key to an additional species of Bractaeon. A manuscript note loosely inserted in Vol. III by British coleopterist John Kidson Taylor (1839-1922), describes an additional characteristic overlooked by Fowler to distingish Rhizophagus nitidulus and R. dispar.

Provenance: Ex libris label of original owner, Philip B. Mason resecured to endpaper of Vol. I (labels from remaining volumes have been retained in an envelope). Philip Brooks Mason (1842-1903) was a medical doctor, naturalist and collector who spent most of his life in Burton on Trent, Staffordshire. His natural history collections eventually grew to such an extent that he erected a museum adjacent to his house. Fowler records in his obituary for Mason that this '…certainly contains the finest collection of British Zoology that has ever been got together by a private indivudual.' Fowler also states that he was first led to take up the study of Coleoptera by Mason (and W. Garneys) (1904, Entomologist's Monthly Magazine 40: 17-19). There is also an additional hand-written label with the name of British coleopterist, R.S. Mitford (who collected beetles with Donisthorpe on Lundy Island in 1913, both publishing the results of their work the same year in Entomologist's Record), with annotation recording the purchase of the books from him (by Hastings Museum) for £15 in 1928. Mitford's 40-drawer cabinet of British Coleoptera was also presented to the Museum in 1927. The latest coleopterist to own this set was Robert Angus who had the set rebound (before and after photos enclosed).