5 volumes, large folio (545 x 362 mm). 360 fine hand-colored lithographic plates, many highlighted in gold leaf overpainted with transparent varnish and oil colors, by Gould, Henry Constantine Richter and William Hart, printed by Hullmandel and Walton, Walter and the Mintern Brothers mounted on guards. (Some isolated spots, heavier spotting to just a few leaves of plates and text.) Contemporary hard-grained green morocco, ruled in gilt, spine in 6 compartments with 5 raised bands, gilt-lettered in 2, ruled in gilt in the rest, edges gilt. Provenance: John Straker, Stagshaw House (armorial bookplate). 

GOULD'S MASTERPIECE. "An incomparable catalogue and compendium of beauties" (Fine Bird Books p. 29). Most of the subjects came from Gould's own collection of Humming-bird specimens, a number of which he exhibited at the Regent's Park Zoological Gardens during the Great Exhibition of 1851. The plates gave Gould the chance to display the new technique of imitating the birds' iridescent plumage by the use of brilliant metallic coloring. This is an attractively-bound copy of good size. The work was issued in twenty-five parts, followed much later, between 188 and 1887, by a mostly posthumous five-part supplement by Richard Bowdler-Sharpe, not present here. Ayer/Zimmer pp. 258 & 263-64; Anker 177; Fine Bird Books p. 78; Nissen IVB 380; Sauer 16 and 29; Wood p. 365.