Sale 2496 - Maps & Atlases, Natural History & Color Plate Books, December 13, 2018

310 c   SAY, THOMAS. American Conchology, or Descriptions of the Shells of North America. Illustrated by Coloured Figures from Original Drawings Executed from Nature. 68 hand-colored stipple engraved plates. 8vo, 8 1 / 2 x5 1 / 4 inches, contemporary marbled boards rebacked and recornered in plain calf to style, minor wear; moderate browning and offsetting, descriptive leaf to plate 28 with a tear into text; ex-Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, with their perforated stamp to title. New Harmony, Indiana, 1830-[1838] [2,500/3,500] A rarity produced most extraordinarily on the American frontier. Thomas Say was a resident of Robert Owen’s utopian wilderness community of New Harmony, Indiana. The naturalist’s work on American mollusks, printed and published there, laid the foundation of knowledge of the subject. Say collaborated on the book with his wife, Lucy, who was responsible for the delicate drawings of the shells and bivalves. Bennett 94.