De Solenodonte

N.p. [but St. Petersburg]: s.n., 1833. FIRST EDITION. 2 full-page lithographic plates, one in contemporary hand color. Original pink wrappers, old repair to spine. Manuscript notes on the front wrapper, old stamps of Balfour Library. First edition, an offprint on the discovery of the venomous shrew-like mammal Solenodon. Also called agoutas, these furry creatures are native to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Brandt, a German naturalist and curator of the Zoological Museum in St. Petersburg, received a specimen of the as-yet unclassified animal from colleagues in Haiti in 1833. His report was first published in the Mémoires Academie Sciences St. Pétersbourg.

Rare. OCLC finds only two copies worldwide (Univ. of Kansas and Berlin).