The Naturalist's Library: Mammalia: Marsupialia: or Pouched Animals

Very good copy of the volume on Marsupials from Sir William Jardine's ambitious Victorian series The Naturalist's Library

With all 37 steel engravings (35 hand-coloured plates, handcoloured frontis, and engraved portrait of Scottish surgeon and anatomist John Barclay) engraved by Scottish engraver William Lizars after illustrations by George Robert Waterhouse.

Includes the extinct Tasmanian tiger, Thylacinus cynocephalus, along with koala, kangaroo, wallaby, duck-billed platypus, dunnart, eastern quoll, sugar glider, echidna, and other curious mostly Australian animals,

Sir William Jardine (1800-1874) was a Scottish naturalist. He is best known for writing and editing the 40-volume series of natural history books, The Naturalist's Library from 1833 to 1866. "In addition to the description and depiction (mostly finely coloured plates) by various well-known contributors to almost the whole range of the subject, the series is supplemented by biographies of famous naturalists of all times and all countries. It is well described as a remarkable little library of early nineteenth zoology, as well as a brief account of the lives of the chief zoologists of all time." (Casey Wood)

George Robert Waterhouse (1810-1888) was an English naturalist. He was a keeper at the department of geology and later curator of the Zoological Society of London's museum. Apart from this volume, he also wrote the mammalia section for an edition of Charles Darwin's Zoology of the Voyage of HMS Beagle (1840), and two volumes on Marsupiata (1846) and Rodentia (1848) for publisher Hippolyte Bailliere's A Natural History of the Mammalia.

In original publisher's brown cloth, gilt title on spine, green endpapers, cloth a bit sunned and worn, but book block solid. Interior clean and fresh with slight overall age toning, but all steel plates under tissue guards with delicate handcolour.

Very good copy of this introduction to the curious order of marsupials