Paris, Dufresne, 1784. 8vo (19.1 x 12.5 cm). [ii], 367 pp. Contemporary quarter calf over mottled boards. Spine with red morocco label with gilt title. Edges speckled red.

Describing a huge and varied collection of naturalia and scientific instruments from a 'M. De Montribloud', most probably the French tax collector and banker Baron Christophe-François Nicolau de Montribloud (1733-1786). He once was one of the richest men in Lyon, but after being accused of mismanagement as a tax collector (suspected of having mingled his personal accounts with those of the city of Lyon), he was replaced in 1776. He then left Lyon for Paris, where he went bankrupt. In this catalogue, the contents are favourably compared with those in the Davila and d'Argenville sales (from which he purchased large parts; vide Brignon), and include corals, sponges, echinoderms, and in particular a great number of shells, including buccines, nerites, rochers ( Murex), tonnes (tun shells), vis (terebrids), porcelaines (Cypraeidae), volutes, huitres (oysters), tellines, etc., etc., but also fish, reptiles, birds, eggs, numerous minerals, fossils - again many molluscs - and so on, from all over the world, and finally a number of scientific instruments. A permit to distribute this catalogue was granted in November 1782, but it took another 15 months before the actual sale. Provenance: in the top margin of the title page the stamp of the American malacologist Richard Irwin Johnson (1925-2020). Slight shelf-wear, a tiny worm hole to the lower gutter of the first two or three leaves, otherwise an excellent, clean copy. Rare. We found no auction records. OCLC reports only five copies, of which four in Europe, and one in the US. Brignon, A. (2016). Les poissons téléostéens d'Öhningen (Miocène, Allemagne) de la collection Johann Conrad Ammann étudiés par Georges Cuvier et leur apport à l'histoire de la paléontologie. Geodiversitas38(1): 33-64 [Montribloud: p. 42].