Description
New York: Published for the Subscribers by the Author. Printed by Taylor and Francis of London, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street, 1882. Folio. (14 3/4 x 11 1/2 inches). First edition. 60 lithograph plates printed by M. and N. Hanhart comprising 57 plates by and after John Gerrard Keulemans and 3 uncolored plates by and after Joseph Smit. Title, Woodcut printer's device of Taylor and Francis, Dedication to Osbert Salbin, Preface, Introduction, List of Plates, Generic Characters, 60 plates, Explanatory texts, 10 publisher's wrappers for original fascicles. Original black and brown half morocco over green cloth, five raised bands forming six compartments on skillfully rebacked spine, gilt-lettered in second and third compartments, green marbled endpapers, uncut, with the printed wrappers of the ten original fascicles bound-in at the rear
First edition of this "comprehensive treatment of the entire family of hornbills" by one of the best-known American ornithologists of the late-1800s, superbly illustrated by John Gerrard Keulemans, the most popular ornithological artist of the period. [Zimmer]
Elliot's is the first important monograph on the widely-scattered family of extraordinary birds known as hornbills. "The Bucerotidae are pretty equally divided at the present day between the Ethiopian and Oriental Regions, the first having twenty-seven and the latter twenty-nine species, while but a few are scattered about the islands of the Malay archipelago." [Introduction] As the name of the species suggests, the most notable characteristic of hornbills is their long, curving bills, which are often colorful and display distinctively shaped protrusions called casques along the upper ridge of their beaks. This feature makes them some of the most striking and memorable birds in the animal kingdom. Hornbills are extraordinary not only for their physical appearance but also for their behavior: the most noteworthy shared trait among the species is the male's habit of "enclosing the female in the hollow of some tree, firmly fastening her in by a wall of mud, and keeping her close prisoner until the eggs are hatched." [Introduction] The male will feed the female through a slit in the wall while she incubates the eggs. She will only break through the wall of mud and leave the nest once the young have hatched, at which point the wall is rebuilt and remains in place until the young are ready to fly. The beauty of this species is here ably captured by Keulemans's highly accurate and beautifully observed plates. Keulemans was born in Rotterdam, Holland, in 1842, but lived chiefly in England, working on many of the most important ornithological monographs and periodicals published between 1870 and his death in London in 1912. He was undoubtedly the most popular bird artist of his day as well as being the most prolific. Throughout his career, Keulemans illustrated works by Richard Bowdler Sharpe, Henry Seebohm, William Vincent Legge, and Henry Eeles Dresser. "He was gifted with a superb sense of draughtsmanship and revealed his considerable versatility in capturing the significant subtleties of color, form, and expression in the birds represented in his various illustrations." [Feathers to Brush] "The drawings, the happy results of Mr. Keulemans's talented pencil, most characteristically depict the strange forms and attitudes of these curious birds." [Preface] The plate list is confusing: the two uncolored "Plates of Generic Characters" by Smit are not included in the list while Plate XLIV, "Anorrhinus austeni," is included on the list but was never published because no specimen was obtainable. Of his generation of American naturalists, Elliot traveled most widely outside the United States, spending time in the West Indies, Brazil, Turkey, Egypt, Palestine, Ethiopia, Somalia, India, China, Japan, and Europe, among other places, where he studied the regional avifauna and collected specimens. In addition to his ornithological works, which include several monographs and a work on North American bird species, Elliot also studied mammals, particularly primates, and was awarded the role of Curator of Zoology at the Field Columbian Museum in Chicago in 1894. Elliot acknowledged that the hornbill was perhaps not the most attractive bird species, yet he still found its appearance fascinating, writing: "The very peculiar appearance of the majority of the birds contained in this volume, as well as the extraordinary habits and structure common to all, which make them to differ from other feathered creatures, together with the generally meagre accounts of many of the species, only to be met with by searching numerous publications, were the chief reasons that induced me to select this family as the subject of my fifth illustrated monograph."
BM(NH) I, p. 522. Fine Bird Books (1990) p. 95. Gallatin Catalogue, p. 52. Keulemans and Coldewey, Feathers to Brush: John Gerrard Keulemans, p. 61. Nissen IVB 297. Soffer Ornithological Collection. Yale/Ripley, p. 88. Wood, p. 331. Zimmer, p. 207.
