Montpellier, Renaud, an IX [1801]. 8vo (21.8 x 13.5 cm). 116 pp. Near contemporary quarter calf over marbled boards, spine with gilt bands and title.

A heavily annotated copy, with several additional leaves with handwritten text bound in, of an early French malacological catalogue in accordance with the systems of Linnaeus, and Cuvier. Written by the French malacologist Jacques Philippe Raymond Draparnaud (1772-1804). This work includes several new species, and deliberately precedes the author's Histoire des mollusques terrestres et fluviatiles de la France. In the rear, two papers by De Boissy are bound in (4 pp.; two hand-coloured lithographed plates, original printed wrappers of Guérin's Magasin de Zoologie, 1835), and a handwritten index, containing the name of the Swiss naturalist Charpentier, i.e. Jean G. F. de Charpentier (1786-1855). This is in a different old hand. A pencilled note on the title states that the annotations are the author's. Indeed, we see that descriptions of species absent in this work, but present in Draparnaud's 1805 work are added, but the descriptions are - although similar - by no means identical, excluding the possibility that someone copied them from the printed 1805 edition. We conclude that this is the copy of his 1801 publication that Draparnaud himself used for preparing his 1805 work. On the front pastedown a small Art Nouveau bookplate of Jos.-Ant. Juliany Manuescoe [Manosque, France]. A stamp of the American malacologist and malaco-historian Richard Irwin Johnson (1925-2020) in the top margin of the half-title. A very good, unique copy. Caprotti II, 22 (186).