Nuculidi terziarie rinvenute nelle provincie Meridionali d'Italia

Seguenza, Giuseppe (1833-89). Nuculidi terziare rinvenute nelle provincie meridionali d'Italia. Reale Accademia dei Lincei, Memoria della classe di scienze fisiche, matematiche e naturali, Vol. I (1877). Rome: col Tipi del Salviucci, 1877. 40pp. 5 plates. 310 x 224 mm. Original printed wrappers, chipped, spine splitting, front wrapper partly detached at spine, library stamp. Minor foxing and toning, slight crease in upper corner, but very good. Presentation Copy, inscribed by the author on the title: "Al Chiarisso Sigr Duca del [...] Offre l'Autore"; "Transferred by the Author to me R. B. Watson" inscribed beneath in a different hand. Tipped and laid in are three Autograph Letters signed from Seguenza to Watson, dated 21 June, 19 August and 24 November 1879, totaling 7 pages. The letter of 19 August also includes a manuscript list of shell species in what appears to be Watson's hand.

First Edition, and scarce, with only two copies listed in OCLC and COPAC (U. Florence; Nat. Hist. Museum, London). Seguenza was a prominent Sicilian naturalist and paleontologist who specialized in marine malacology. His monograph on the tertiary nuculidae of southern Italy describes and illustrates 58 species of these small saltwater clams, including the newly discovered fossil species Nucinella calabra, Leda peraffinis, Yoldia sinuosa and Neilo messanensis. Seguenza presented this copy to Robert Boog Watson (1823-1910), the Scottish malacologist who prepared the report on the scaphopoda (tusk shells) and gastropoda (snails) collected during the H. M. S. Challenger expedition.