BUFFON Georges-Louis Leclerc comte de Oeuvres… mises en ordre par M. le comte de Lacépède.

Nissen, ZBI, 694.

Fine edition, including the introduction praising Buffon written Lacépède who also added a biography. This is a new edition, based on the one given by Rapet in 1817-1818 (see Nissen, ZBI, 693) with 10 plates added (the 1817-1818 edition had only 235 plates according to Nissen).

This edition is enlarged with the Précis des découvertes nouvellement faites dans l’Histoire Naturelle adding new discoveries made since the first edition in 1749.

This edition is illustrated with 245 engravings, mostly coloured, engraved after the drawings by the natural history artist Prêtre who illustrated a large number of books during his lifetime.

“Buffon’s work is of exceptional importance because of its diversity, richness, originality, and influence. Buffon was among the first to create an autonomous science, free of any theological influence. He emphasized the importance of natural history and the great length of geological time. He envisioned the nature of science and understood the roles of paleontology, zoological geography, and animal psychology. He realized both the necessity of transformism and its difficulties. Although his cosmogony was inadequate and his theory of animal reproduction was weak, and although he did not understand the problem of classification, he did establish the intellectual framework within which most naturalists up to Darwin worked.” (DSB)

A very attractive copy.