Paris, Imprimerie Impériale, 1869. In three parts (Texte, Atlas de Paléontologie, and Planches de Géologie et de Conchyliologie). Large 4to and folio (33.8 x 23.9 cm). Texte: cvi, 289 pp., four double-sized coloured maps, 36 engraved text figures, five tissue-guarded plates (four profiles and one with stone age axes); Atlas: 82 [46, a-d] pp.; seven text engravings, 86 plates [1-79, 29bis, 48bis, 53bis, 59bis, 59ter, 62bis, 62ter, 78bis) being tissue guarded heliogravures of mammalian bones, including human skulls, etc., and stone age tools. Géologie and Conchyliologie, 32 pp. Three lithographed plates of shells, three very large folded, coloured geological profiles (numbered 5-7, being a suite to the maps in the text part). All in original green, printed boards or wrappers. Not in Nissen, ZBI.

A complete copy of the rare first edition. Edited by the French geologist Marie François Eugène Belgrand (1810-1878). Dealing mostly with (Early) Holocene faunas, but apparently including Pleistocene faunas too. This work was to form the start of a series of publications on the Seine river, but it was all that was ever published. It contains, however, the complete and essential topography and geology, as well as the description of the fossil mammals and stone age tools, and the appendix on the new and poorly known Quaternary fresh water and terrestrial molluscs by the (in)famous French malacologist Jules-René Bourguignat (1829-1892), with fine illustrations. The early use of photography in illustrating palaeontological and archaeological objects is noteworthy. Included are many photos of human skulls and other bones, and those of contemporary mammals, including several that have now become extinct, for instance the mammoth, other elephants, a cave hyena, etc. Boards rubbed, the Paléontologie atlas lacking parts of the wrappers, and binding loose. Internally clean. A very good, complete copy in a good, contemporary binding. Rare in this state. Cat. BM(NH) p. 128. Not in Nissen, ZBI.