Roma, Varese, 1681. In two volumes (text and plates). 4to (23.7 x 17.2 cm). I (text). Engraved allegorical title; letterpress title, [xiv], 384, [xv] pp.; four engraved plates (opposite p. 50, 51, 59, 316), several text engravings; II (atlas). Engraved allegorical title; engraved section title to part IV; engraved title to Classe prima, six plates with figs 1-20); engraved title to Classe seconda, 23 plates with figs 1-100); and engraved title to Classe terza, followed by 77 plates with figs 1-266, 268-311, 315-314 [ recte 312-313], 314-319), for a total of 110 plates, and six engraved titles. Contemporary uniform full vellum. Spines with four raised bands and contemporary script title in ink. All edges blue.

The first - Italian - edition of this influential first work entirely devoted to shells and malacology. Written by the Italian Jesuit priest and writer Filippo Bonanni, or Buonanni (1638-1725), with fine engravings by Giovanni Francesco Venturini (1650-1710) after original drawings by Buonanni - or Bonanni - himself. First published in 1681, it anticipates both in time and subject matter the Historia Conchiliorum (1685-1692) of Martin Lister (1638-1712). Even the second - Latin - edition (published in 1684) precedes Lister's work. Its quality is beyond questioning, although Dance (1986: 21) rated Lister’s work above the first work purely devoted to conchology. Dance, however, fails to substantiate this claim. His quote from another Briton, Johnston (1850), "his volume contains not a single fact additional to the stock of knowledge in his own province", is peculiar: the many fine drawings and the engravings made thereof represent many new and little-known species. Many served as a basis (type figures) for Linnaeus's Systema Naturae, 10th edition: the starting point of modern zoological nomenclature. Also, it is in this work that Bonanni correctly described the function of the chambers in the Nautilus shell (Angeletti, p. 652). The work is divided in four chapters. The first three represent an early attempt to classify the Mollusca. Part I contains the cap-shaped univalves, which are now mainly classed as gastropods, but includes scaphopods and some other groups as well, including some echinoderms and marine worms. The numbering of the 27 figures runs from 1 to 20A-G; Part II described the "Secunda classe de Testacei biualui [bivalvi]"; nearly identical with the current Class Bivalvia, with 100 figures numbered from 1 to 100; Part III, which is by far the largest section, deals with the turbinate univalves, and includes many-whorled gastropods: "Terza Classe de Testacei uniualui [univalvi] Turbinati", with shells numbered 1-319, omitting number 267 by mistake. The fourth part is the atlas, which has is own engraved general title, engraved title to the part, and three engraved titles to the three classes. Provenance: "Della libraria di s. spirito di Reggio" in a neat contemporary hand on both title page versos. The text volume with spurious marginalia in a contempory, Italian hand. Italian names in a very neat hand added to the plates up to classis III, Turbinati, ending with, on a blank verso, with an extremely neat "Avvertimento", discussing the nomenclature. In the same hand, below figs 265-266, the absence of a figure numbered 267 is explained. Some worming to the spine and endpapers, just reaching the title of the text volume, a weak, diagonal fold in a few plate margins, most certainly a wonderful copy. Angeletti, 1985, Ricreatione dell’ochio (ed. Ermes); Caprotti I, p. 33; Caprotti 1985: 186-188 [ Boll. Malac. 21(7-9)]; Dance, Shell collecting, p. 43; Nissen BBI, 753.