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Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Held at Philadelphia, for Promoting Useful Knowledge. Volume IV. Philadelphia: Printed and Sold by Thomas Dobson, at the Stone-House, No. 41, South Second Street. 1799. 13 out of 14 plates (incomplete, list below). 531 p + 42 p Index. Binding measuring 10 x 8 , large 8vo. Plates: Eccentric Anomaly of the planets, 68 p. Plate of the Jerboa, 124 p. Two Plates Indian Curiosities, 180 p. Height of Virginia Mountains, 220 p. Inguana, 280 p. Plant diagram, 320 p. Boats, Improvements on Mills, 360 p. Rattle-snakes, 378 p. Kettle for boiling inflammable fluids, 432 p. LACKING SAND-HILLS OF VIRGINIA (page 444) Elevators, 522 p. Two plates of large bones, 530 p. In poor condition. As is. Both front and rear boards (plus end-pages) detached from binding; boards were poorly repaired via non-binder s tape, but tape has since broken. Cloth spine & leather title label are chipped as a result of poor tape repair. Ex-library manuscript locator code sticker found on tail of spine. White print S also found below title label on spine. Binding cracked between pages 444 and 445 (where plate is lacking). Edges of boards scuffed and corners bumped. Head and tail of spine lacking (including headbands). Edges of text-block painted yellow. Ex-library bookplate found on front paste-down: Institute Free Library, Wilmington DE + ownership bookplate above with the name: James F. Wilson, M.D. Moderate to severe age-staining and toning throughout text-block. Most plates exhibit severe off-setting to adjacent leaves (text remains legible). Binding is cracked & close to breaking. Please see photos and ask questions, if any, before purchasing. Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826) has been reffered to as the father of American vertebrate paleontology. Jefferson did not believe in the extinction of animals (for religious reasons). He was particularly fascinated by the American mastodon, the elephant relative that he referred to for many years as the mammoth. It was not until 1806 in Paris that the French naturalist Georges Cuvier formally separated mastodonte from mammoth and also concluded that there were two living species of elephant. But in his Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), Jefferson had already concluded that the cold-adapted mammoths were different from the living tropical African and Asian elephants. Over many years he amassed a large collection of mammoth remains, which he displayed in the entrance hall of Monticello, his great house in Virginia. Jefferson s second great paleontological interest arose in 1799 when he was sent some bones of a huge mammal of the clawed kind that had been found in a cave in Greenbrier County (in present-day West Virginia). He described this creature in his writings and named it Megalonyx ( great claw ). Jefferson was sure that this creature also still lived and, as is well known, he very much hoped that the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804 1806 would find evidence of both living mastodons and Megalonyx in the American West. No. XXX (Page 246): A Memoir on the Discovery of certain Bones of a Quadruped of the Clawed Kind in the Western Parts of Virginia. No. LXXVI (Page 526): A Description of the Bones deposited, by the President, in the Museum of the Society, and represented in the annexed plates. (BY C. Wistar, M.D.) Vol. IV of the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. Incredible plates (only one lacking) + Thomas Jefferson's paleontology research. FORN-SHELF-0466-BB-2412-HK2196.
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