Die Schmetterlinge in Abbildungen nach der Natur mit Beschreibungen de Eugen Johann Christoph Esper - 1782-86: (Butterflies pictured after Nature with desciptions)

Very good copies of Volumes 3 and 4 only of the very rare four-volume, first edition of this beautiful German entomological classic.

Complete with 189 beautifully handcoloured engraved plates in two volumes. (The four-volume set contains 438 plates.)

Engraved and delicately hand-coloured by Johann Carl Bock, Johan Georg Sturm, Johann Georg Klinger, and others, after drawings by Esper.

Esper's illustrations depict the complete life cycles of many European butterflies and moths, many along with their host plants. Many specimens are shown in pupa, larva (caterpillar) and adult forms, while some adult butterflies and moths show alternate sides (upper and lower) of their wings on the left and right wings.

Volume 3: 1782, 396 text pages, 81 handcoloured plates I-LXXIX.

Volume 4: 1786, 372 text pages, 108 handcoloured plates LXXX-CLXXXIII (Noct. 1 to 104).

Eugen Johann Christoph Esper (1742-1810) was a German zoologist, entomologist and phycologist, professor of zoology at Erlangen and director of the Natural History Museum. His other major works include books on plant-animals, Die Pflanzthiere (1788-1830), seaweeds, Icones Fucorum (1797-1808), and mineralogy, Lehrbuch der Mineralogie (1810). Esper's collection of specimens is now in the zoological museum in Munich.

In contemporary full leather bindings, spines with 1cm loss to top and bottom, five-raised bands and leather title labels, gilt tooling, tears and scuffs to the leather boards, small old library paper labels on rear boards, armorial bookplates on marble endpapers, title pages with vignettes, interior clean with fine vibrant hand-colour to the copperplates, chainlink paper bright and unfoxed, a few plates with slight offsetting.