Marrin's Bookshop

Item Description

4to. 11.25 x 9.25 inches. 155 + [2] pp. Bound in original black cloth, gilt, in pictorial dust wrapper. A fine copy. 1992 gift inscription on first free endpaper. Illustrated throughout by colour photographs, including title page vignette. A lavishly illustrated collaboration between US photographer of natural history and science, Rosamond Wolff Purcell (b.1942) and text writer, Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) US paleontologist, evolutionary biologist and historian of science. Eight surviving collections are examined with biographical notes on their founders, including Peter the Great of Russia, Mary Anning of Lyme Regis and Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz, Swiss born US biologist and geologist (1807-73). The subjects of the collections cover anatomical, paleontological and fossil and biological specimens, including birds of paradise plumage.