A Monograph of the Fresh-Water Polyzoa including all the Known Species, Both British and Foreign

London: Ray Society, 1856. First edition.

STRIKING LARGE HAND-COLORED ENGRAVINGS OF MINUTE FRESH WATER INVERTEBRATES.

25.5X36.5 cm recently handsomely bound folio hardcover, blue cloth boards, black leather spine with gilt title, i-viii, 119 pp, 11 engravings (10 hand-colored) with facing letterpress descriptions. Small unobtrusive embossed library stamp to text and plates, browning, old water stain, good+ in custom archival mylar cover. POLYZOA--now known as BRYOZOA are a phylum of simple, aquatic invertebrate animals, nearly all living in sedentary colonies. Typically about 0.5 millimetres long, they have a special feeding structure called a lophophore, a "crown" of tentacles used for filter feeding.

GEORGE JAMES ALLMAN (1812 - 1898) was an Irish ecologist, botanist and zoologist who served as Emeritus Professor of Natural History at Edinburgh University in Scotland. He became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1854, and received a Royal medal in 1873. He received the Cunningham Medal of the Royal Irish Academy in 1878. For several years (1874–1881) he was president of the Linnaean Society, and in 1879 he presided over the Sheffield meeting of the British Association.