François Valentijn, 1773

VALENTIJN, François (1666–1727). Ehemaligen Predigers auf den Ostindischen Inseln Amboina, Banda, & Abhandlung von Schnecken, Muscheln und Seegewächsen, welche um Amboina und den umliegenden Inseln gefunden warden. Als ein Anhang zu Georg Eberhard Rumphs Amboinischen Raritätenkammer… Vienna: Krauss, 1773.

An uncut copy in original boards; a German edition and only separate edition of the Dutch supplement of 1754 to Valentyn’s Oud en nieuw Oost Indien, vol III (1726). It was published as an appendix to Rumpf’s D’Amboinsche Rariteitkamer (1705). Valentijn had lived in the East Indies for 16 years, where became a friend of the German naturalist Georg Eberhard Rumpf (1627-1702), the pioneer researcher of the natural history of the Dutch East Indies. Rumpf’s D’Amboinsche Rariteitkamer is largely devoted to the conchology of Amboina, and is famous for its fine engravings of shells, reputedly the work of Maria Sibylla Merian. This edition was translated by Philipp Ludwig Statius Müller, professor of natural history at Erlangen and member of the Akademie der Naturforscher. Apart from the odd mermaid, the plates are exclusively conchological and very finely engraved. Nissen ZBI 4215.

Folio (380 x 255 mm). Title printed in red and black, with 18 engraved plates (two double-page) by I.C. Berndt (a few short marginal tears). Original boards (chipping to paper along spine and at extremities, corners a little bumped, titled on upper cover in ink).