5 volumes, imperial folio (552 x 375 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, each with tissue guards. (Mild toning in margins, a few plates lightly spotted.) Contemporary half morocco gilt, spines in 5 compartments with 5 spines, gilt-lettering in 2, gilt fillets in others (spotting to covers, extremities lightly rubbed). Provenance: Old (institutional?) stamps removed on front free endpaper in vol.1.

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. The work was issued in twenty-five parts, followed much later, between 1880 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; Wood p.365.