Elements of Conchology: or, An Introduction to The Knowledge of Shells

A good copy of this scarce work, with 7 folding hand-coloured plates in contemporary full calf binding. Emanuel Mendes da Costa (1717-1791) was a naturalist with a focus on fossils. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1747. In the preface he states that he did not see himself as a conchologist, but regularly came across shells in his fossil work. He began to study them in depth, giving a series of public lectures on the subject. Those formed the basis of 'Elements'. The binding has a decorative panelled calf design to the boards. The central panel is bordered with an intricate design in gilt and the panel itself has a tree calf pattern. The outer margins are a speckled calf with a thin gilt decorative border, and gilt patterning to the inner board edges. The spine has decorative gilt compartments with a title label. It has been rebacked at some time, repairing damage at the top spine end and at the side further down. That repair is now looking fragile and there is splitting at the spine joints, particularly the front joint. The binding is however, currently sound with boards attached. There is repair at the corners which are rubbed and turned inwards, and some surface rubbing. The endpapers have been replaced. Contents: 2 initial blanks; title (with small spot on the L of Elements); preface pp iii-viii; contents pp iii-vi (pagination error); text pp 1-280; 7 folding plates with explanatory text pp 281-296; 2 folding tables; index pp 299-318; 2 final blanks. The contents are very clean and the plates clean and well coloured. There is some offsetting from plates to text and plate 1 has some browning. There is occasional spotting to text (pp 144-147 worst affected) and some old ink scholarly notes - mainly correcting the classifications with some words crossed out (generally still readable underneath). The main pages affected by this are 128, 135, 154, 173-198 and 207. Please enquire if you would like to see additional images.…