London, the Author, [1878]-1880-[1881], 1892. In two volumes. Large 4to (30.5 x 24.2 cm). Title page; 1289 pp. [xlvi, 544; (545)-1237, 1225b-1226b, 4 (subscription list)]; one unnumbered engraved plate of the general external anatomy of birds, "outline of crow"; one colour-printed map of Ceylon (frontispiece), 34 [25; 9] chromolithographed plates, finished by hand; several steel-engravings in the text (one group occupying a whole page); printed erratum leaf, dated 1892, bound in (opposite p. xxviii); portrait of the author tipped in on first front pastedown. Uniform red half morocco over red linen boards. Spines with five raised, gilt-bordered bands and gilt title.

A massive work and the most important work on the birds of present-day Sri Lanka by a wide margin. This is the magnum opus of the Australian ornithologist and army captain (later Colonel) William Vincent Legge (1841-1918). Of the stunning plates, at least 33 are by the famous Dutch bird illustrator, John Gerrard Keulemans (1842-1912). This work was first published in three parts, between 1878 and 1880, but then expanded to a "second edition" (Anker), with an additional (third) appendix, published in 1881. Keulemans and Coldewey state that 31 plates are by Keulemans, but the correct number seems to be 33. The egg-plate is not signed by Keulemans, and is possibly by him, too. Indeed, according to Zimmer, all coloured plates are by Keulemans. The erratum leaf is from much later, and seldom included. A few introductory text leaves mildly spotted, but otherwise clean, the plates, save for a few, isolated small spots, all clean; initial subscriber's list discarded, as is the first, largely blank leaf containing pp. 345-346. Both were replaced upon finishing the work. In all an excellent copy. Anker, 284; Keulemans and Coldewey, Feathers to a Brush. The Victorian Bird Artist John Gerrard Keulemans. 1842-1912, p. 62; Nissen IVB, 539. Zimmer, p. 282.