New York: V.G. Audubon, 1849, 1851, 1854. In three volumes. 8vo (264 x 180 mm). Half-titles, 155 hand-colored lithographed plates by W.E. Hitchcock and R. Trembly after original drawings by John James Audubon and John Wodehouse Audubon. (Some very minor soiling to a few leaves.) Publisher's brown morocco elaborately decorated in blind, sides with central lozenges with title lettered in blind, spines with raised bands, gilt-lettered and decorated in blind, edges gilt (some light rubbing to corners and extremities, a few hinges starting). Small bookseller's label on paste-downs (C. S. Francis & Co.). Bennett, p. 5; Nissen ZBI 163; Sabin 2368; Wood p. 208

First octavo edition. The Quadrupeds was first published between 1845 and 1848 in three folio volumes with 150 colored plates; a supplement, published in 1854, provided an additional volume of text and six plates. This first octavo edition, issued in response to the success of the octavo edition of The Birds of America, contains all of the original 150 plates and five, of the six, supplemental plates, each reduced by means of the camera lucida.