A. E. Ortmann. Papers on Mollusca. 1888-1926.

Jena, Gustav Fischer, and other places and publishers, 1888-1926. 58 papers in two (including 17 original papers. Thick 8vo (21.5 x 14.0 cm). Numerous pages and plates. Uniform green buckram with gilt title on the spines. The American malacologist Richard Irwin Johnson (1925-2020) wrote a number of biographies and bibliographies of American malacological authors, published by the Museum of Comparative Zoology, in Cambridge, MA. As a basis for these papers, he accumulated the published works of these malacologists in one or more bound, chronologically arranged, convolutes. Often adding previous biographies, obituaries, etc. Not necessarily he used original offprints or excerpts - although this is certainly true for many of the more obscure works - but also photocopies of texts already contained elsewhere in his vast library, e.g., in periodicals such The Nautilus, Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, and the Proceedings of the United States National Museum. This is his convolute of the works of the German - later American - malacologist Arnold Edward Ortmann (1863-1927), a pupil of Ernst Haeckel. Ortmann specialized in non-marine molluscs, in particular najades, but his first two - well-illustrated - papers deal with recent cephalopods. In this convolute, 17 papers - including all larger ones - are original offprints, often with the printed front wrappers. It includes, for instance both cephalopod papers, and his Notes upon the families and genera of the najades (144 pp., three plates). All original papers in very good condition. Bound in front of both volumes is Johnson's (1977) Arnold Edward Ortmann, a bibliography of his recent work on mollusks, with a catalogue of his Recent molluscan taxa (Occ. Pap. Moll. 4[58]). A unique item.