London, Longmans, Green, and Co., 1872. Folio (31.3 x 24.7 cm.). Half-title, title page with woodcut vignette, pp. [v]-vi (preface); 24 lithographed plates by the author, each with an explanatory text leaf. Original green pebbled cloth with gilt title and vignette on the front board. Bevelled boards. All edges gilt. Yellow endpapers.

A very rare near-mint copy of the first edition of this fantastically illustrated work by the British landscape and nautical painter, gardener, and zoologist Edward William Cooke (1811-1880). He was a Fellow of the Linnean Society, Fellow of the Geological Society, and Fellow of the Zoological Society. On the title is a little verse, "These oddities, from fancy drawn, may surely raise the question, will Darwin say - by chance they're formed, or 'Natural Selection?'". The author whimsically added the German word Entwickelungsgeschichte (ontogeny) above the title, and a gilt-lettered caption, " Systema naturae non apud Linnaeum" below the front board vignette. The animals "invented" and beautifully illustrated are assembled from parts of various real animals. Molluscs, fish, and various mammals feature prominently. Sometimes it is quite a sport to discover how many and which animals, exactly, form parts of the grotesques. As noted by Claus Nissen, Cooke illustrated several "serious" zoological works, including William Scrope's Days and Nights of Salmon Fishing in the Tweed (1843), and A. G. Butler's Illustrations of Typical Species of Lepidoptera Heterocera(1877). Minimal age-wear (almost as new); lower edge of the front free endpaper a bit uneven, otherwise fine. Nissen ZBI II, p. 528.