Descripción
Folio (21 6/8 x 15 inches). 40 FINE hand-coloured lithographed plates by and after Waterhouse Hawkins, 7 printed in colors and hand-finished, 6 tinted lithographs and 8 uncoloured, printed by M'Lean & Co., or Hullmandel & Walton (without one plate, one or two plates close cropped affecting the caption). Original green cloth, gilt (rebacked in FINE green morocco gilt by Trevor Lloyd with the Knowsley crest in gilt at the head of the spine). Provenance: Blind library stamp of Wigan Free Public Library on the title-page and each plate. First edition, limited issue, probably one of only 100 copies printed. Lord Derby's menagerie was one of the largest private zoological gardens in England, occupying 100 acres of land, and 70 of water. Derby is know to have spent much of his own time caring for the menagerie and writing extensively about it. At his death the living collections included 345 mammals of 94 species (principally antelopes, many of which are illustrated in this book), the majority of them bread at Knowsley. His aviaries contained 1272 birds of 318 species (excluding poultry). After Derby's death some of the living animals were given to the Zoological Society in Regent's Park; the queen selected two black-necked swans and five rare Impeyan pheasants for her own gardens. The remainder were sold at auction in October 1851 but realized only £7000. Derby was regarded as one of the "figureheads of the science of zoological classification, particularly the taxonomy of birds. He was president of the Linnean Society of London from 1828 to 1834, and president of the Zoological Society of London for twenty years from 1831 until his death.He actively encouraged collectors in the field, such as Thomas Bridges in South America, Joseph Burke in South Africa and North America, John MacGillivray in Australia and Indonesia, and Thomas Whitfield in west Africa. With contributions from such individuals, and from other zoological contacts, he formed at Knowsley Hall, near Liverpool, a private and very extensive menagerie of birds and mammals. His record of keeping and breeding rare and later extinct species of bird is still regarded as extraordinary; he was the first to breed in captivity such species as the nene (or Hawaiian goose) and the passenger pigeon. He was probably the first person to breed the Australian budgerigar in captivity in Britain, hatching two chicks in his aviaries in February 1848. Fish and reptiles were also kept in the Knowsley collections; the first live African lungfish (Protopterus sp.) seen in Britain were brought there from the Gambia in 1843. They were placed in warm tanks within the plant-houses and successfully induced from their mud cocoons (Clemency Thorne Fisher for DNB). The fine lithographs of the animals in Derby's menagerie were drawn from life by B. Waterhouse Hawkins, who specialized in natural history subjects and who had prepared the plates for 'Illustrations of Indian Zoology' (1830-35), also edited by Gray. He also contributed forty-nine plates, illustrating fish and reptiles, to Charles Darwin's 'The Zoology of the Voyage of HMS Beagle'. However, he is best known for creating with Richard Owen at the Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition of 1851 "the first major public display of the progression of life on earth, comprising life-sized iron and stone models of fourteen genera of extinct animals, together with reconstructions of fossil plants and geological strata. He held a dinner party on 31 December 1853 in the mould of the largest model, of the dinosaur Iguanodon. The Crystal Palace work was terminated in the summer of 1855, with the display incomplete, but it made a significant contribution to popular understanding of the nature of the development of life on earth and now provides an important insight into palaeontological knowledge in the mid-1850s" (Steve McCarthy for DNB). Edward Lear had been engaged at Knowsley from 1832 to 1836 and had drawn nine birds, seven mammals and a turtle for t. N° de ref. del artículo 72nhr117
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