COLORFUL LICE. Monographia Anoplurorum Britanniae, or an Essay on the British Species of Parasitic Insects belonging to the Order Anoplura of Leach

London: Henry G. Bohn, 1842. First edition.

STRIKING COLOR PLATES OF LICE BY A COLLEAGUE OF DARWIN--COPY OF BRITISH EARL WITH A COLORFUL HISTORY.

14x23 cm hardcover, brown cloth binding, blindstamped decorative covers, gilt title to spine, armorial bookplate of William Charles de Meuron Wentworth-Fitzwilliam to front paste-down, bookplate of Robert L. Chevalier MD to front free endpaper, i-xxiv, [4], 262 pp, [2], [10], 26 hand-colored engraved plates containing over 100 figures.

HENRY DENNY (1803 – 1871) was an English entomologist, known as an authority on parasitic insects. He served as the first curator of the Leeds Museum. The British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1842 made a grant to Denny for the study of British Anoplura; William Kirby tried to bring him in as illustrator of his Introduction to Entomology, and he contributed a few plates for it. A good friend of Charles Darwin, Henry Denny was asked if lice affecting humans could have speciated in different parts of the world. Denny's response would be included in his treatise "The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex". Denny's response to Darwin found its way into the book:[4] "I am informed by Mr. Denny that the most different kinds of dogs, fowls, and pigeons, in England, are infested by the same species of Pediculi or lice." Described in MS Engel: Natural Histories Innumerable Insects. American Museum of Natural History, New York, 2018, "In 1842, he published his Monographia Anoplurorum Britannae (A Monograph on the British Anoplura), a work devoted to the Anoplura, the group of sucking lice that includes the three species so pestiferous to humans. Worldwide there are about 550 species of Anoplura, the vast majority of which live on a wide range of mammals-from aardvarks and elephants to lemurs and even seals. Denny began the project in 1827 spent fifteen years working during his leisure hours, often being rebuked by others for undertaking a work on a group as he wrote in the preface to a group, as he wrote in the preface to his monograph, "whose very name was sufficient to create feelings of disgust." He did everything himself, including preparation of the many fine and accurate anatomical illustrations. figuring all the species, and summarizing everything known about them at the time. It is difficult to conceive of lice making for gorgeous figures, and yet Denny's "louse-y" monograph did just that. Denny worked in an era prior to an understanding of evolutionary processes or the role that human lice play in spreading disease-causing microorganisms, and this lead to some rather quaint perspectives on the origins and purpose of such parasites in nature. Denny had intended to expand his work into the exotic species of lice, amassing specimens from colleagues, including material from Darwin taken during his voyage on the HMS Beagle. Unfortunately, the scope of the work envisioned was massive and left incomplete at the time of his death. Nonetheless, his contribution to the study of parasites was tremendous, and it would be nearly half a century before any real improvement would arrive in the form of a work by Swiss entomologist Édouard Piaget. Although Piaget's coverage of species surpassed that of his predecessor, Denny's sublime portraits remain superior, and through his artistic hand we lose some of our revulsion toward these animals, perhaps even discovering in them a subtle beauty.

PROVENANCE: WILLIAM CHARLES DE MEURON WENTWORTH-FITZWILLIAM, 7TH EARL FITZWILLIAM (1872 – 1943) was a British Army officer, nobleman, politician, and aristocrat. The unusual circumstances of his birth in a remote part of Canada's frontier lands were later to cause major controversy within the family. The accusation was that he was a 'changeling': an unrelated baby inserted into the family line, to purge the bloodline of the epilepsy from which his ostensible forebears had suffered, and to provide that arm of the family with a male heir to inherit the earldom. He sat in the House of Commons for Wakefield from 1895 until 1902, when he inherited the title Earl Fitzwilliam on the death of his grandfather William Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, 6th Earl Fitzwilliam. On his succession to the Earldom, he became one of the richest men in Britain. Following the outbreak of the Second Boer War in late 1899, he volunteered for service with the Imperial Yeomanry where he was commissioned lieutenant on 3 February 1900. In May 1902, Lord Fitzwilliam was employed on the staff of the Duke of Connaught, who was in charge of military events during the Coronation of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra.