Dresden, E. Blochmann & Sohn, 1868. Large 4to (27.5 x 22.1 cm). 18 pp.; one very large, double-folded plate. Later marbled wrappers.

This is a rare and much overlooked, extensive German review, with additional information, of Richard Owen's work on the dodo, with a new lithograph of Owen's famous plate of the whole dodo skeleton, within the living bird's outline. The author, Wilhelm Friedrich Georg Behn (1808-1878) was a German anatomist and zoologist. "In 1845-47 he participated in a circumnavigation of the globe aboard the Danish ship 'Galathea'. As a result of the expedition, he collected valuable natural history material for the zoological museum in Kiel. After his return to Kiel, he was appointed a full professor of anatomy and zoology (1848). In 1867 he resigned his professorship at Kiel as a protest against the annexation of Holstein by Prussia and the formation of the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein. He then relocated to Dresden, where from 1870 until his death in 1878, he served as president of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina" (Wikipedia). Published in the Leopoldina, Amtlich Organ der Kaiserlichen Leopoldino-Carolinischen Deutschen Akademie der Naturforscher, Volume VI, of which this is an excerpt. Some scattered spotting, otherwise very good. Rare. Cat. BM(NH), p. 124. Overlooked by Den Hengst, J. (2003), De Dodo, Portret van een Pechvogel; Fuller, E. (2002), Dodo, From Extinction to Icon; and Van Wissen, B. (1995), Dodo, Raphus cucullatus [Didus ineptus], all who provide substantial bibliographies. Also, not in Nissen IVB or ZBI.