Berlin, [F. Dümmler], 1821. 4to (26.1 x 20.5 cm). Title page, 30 pp. [numbered: (345)-374]; finely engraved and ten originally hand-coloured plates [numbered XXIV-XXXIII]. 20th century blue buckram with gilt title on the spine.

Very rare scientific work written and faithfully illustrated by the renowned German naturalist and poet of French descent, Louis Charles Adélaïde de Chamissot de Boncourt, known as Adelbert von Chamisso (1781-1838). In 1813, he wrote the prose narrative Peter Schlemihl, the man who sold his shadow to the devil, only to find that a man without a shadow is shunned by human societies. This world-famous story popularized the Yiddish word schlemiel for a hopelessly incompetent person, a bungler (Wikipedia). Interestingly, Peter Schlemihl seeks refuge in nature and travels around the world in scientific exploration, and two years later, in 1815, Chamisso himself was appointed botanist to the Russian ship Rurik, fitted out at the expense of Count Nikolay Rumyantsev, which Otto von Kotzebue commanded on a scientific voyage round the world. He collected at the Cape of Good Hope in January 1818. His diary of the expedition ( Tagebuch, 1821) is a fascinating account of the expedition to the Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea. During this trip Chamisso described a number of new species found in what is now the San Francisco Bay Area. Several of these, including the California poppy, Eschscholzia californica, were named after his friend Johann Friedrich von Eschscholtz, the Rurik's entomologist. In return, Eschscholtz named a variety of plants, including the genus Camissonia, after Chamisso. On his return in 1818 he was made custodian of the botanical gardens in Berlin and was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences" (Wikipedia). Second aurhor, Karl Wilhelm Eysenhardt (1794-1825). On the title page it is stated that there should be 11 plates; this, however, is an error. The plate descriptions refer only to the ten plates included here. The binding is protective rather than elegant. Rear, blind wrapper bound in. Provenance: on the front free endpaper recto a stamp of the American malacologist Richard Irwin Johnson (1925-2020). Plates lightly, evenly toned; text leaves spotted, although most leaves only in the margins. Cat. BM(NH) p. 335; Nissen ZBI, 862.