Wien, Karl Gerold's Sohn, 1878-1882. Nine papers in one. Large 4to (29.6 x 23.2 cm). Nine titles with blank versos, 348 pp.; 72 finely lithographed plates (three larger, folded). Contemporary half morocco over marbled boards. Spine with five raised bands, compartments with gilt floral vignettes and gilt title. Marbled endpapers. Speckled edges.

This volume contains Steindachner's well-illustrated papers from the Denkschriften of the Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften in Vienna, with descriptions and illustrations of numerous new and rare fish species. Most importantly, it contains a complete, numbered series of four papers on South American fishes, another paper on fishes from Peru and one on the ichthyofauna of Colombia, as well as a complete suite of two numbered papers principally on African fishes but which also includes the description of a fish species from the Galapagos Islands (Ecuador). Each with a separate, printed title, new pagination (some including the title and blank verso) and plate numbering. The copy of the French ichthyologist Léon Vaillant, with his small stamp on titles, and, later, of the American ichthyologist Ernest A. Lachner (1916-1996), curator of fishes at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. for 34 years between 1949 and 1983. With Lachner's private stamp in the top margins of the front free endpaper, first blank and titles. A few pencilled captions, perhaps by Vaillant, otherwise text and plates clean. A very good, well-bound set. Dean II, pp. 489-490 [1879.1; 1879.4; 1879.5; 1880.3; 1882.1; 1882.2].