96 hand-coloured natural-history plates

First edition of this 'pioneering ecological study' (Rix) on the trees, shrubs and flowers of the Himalayan region of the Indian sub-continent, illustrated with delightful images after Vishnupersaud: the greatest Indian botanical artist of his time. The majority of the plates are after Vishnupersaud (or Vishnu Prasad), 'the most talented of the native Indian [botanical] artists' (Blunt). He was employed by many of the most important plant collectors and botanists of the time, including Nathaniel Wallich and Robert Wight, and unfortunately, he remains one of only a handful of early nineteenth-century Indian botanical artists whose names are known - this in itself is an indication of the high esteem in which his work was held by western botanists at the time. An examination of the large collection of his original drawings still held by the India Office Library and the Kew Herbarium confirms his reputation amongst his contemporaries.

The transfer of the drawings onto stone was carried out by the greatest of the early lithographers of botanical subjects: the Maltese born Maxim Gauci, and, unusually, Forbes also gives the names of the colourists: Mr. Clarke (probably John Clark who coloured the plates in Wallich's Plantae Asiaticae) and Mr. Barclay.

First edition; 2 vols, folio (37 x 27 cm); half-titles, hand-coloured aquatint frontispiece view of the Himalayas by J. Clark after Lt.Col. R. Smith, 1 hand-coloured plate of a geological section of the Himalayas, 3 uncoloured lithographic plates of fossils, 1 hand-coloured lithographed plan of the botanic garden at Saharanpore and 96 hand-coloured natural-history plates (comprising 2 plates of mammals, 2 plates of birds, 2 plates of insects, and 90 botanical plates), drawn on stone by Maxim Gauci and others, coloured by John Clark[e] or Mr. Barclay, after Vishupersaud, Miss Drake, W. Saunders, Luchmun Sing, J.T. Hart and others, printed by Graf & Soret, some very light spotting to some tissue-guards; twentieth-century green half morocco, green cloth boards, spine lettered in gilt in six gilt compartments, top edge gilt, a fine copy.

BM(NH) IV, p.1758; Bradley Bibliography I, p.472; Great Flower Books (1990) p.134; Massachusetts Horticultural Society Library p.272; M.Rix. The Art of the Plant World p.183; Nissen BBI 1690; Stafleu & Cowan IV, 9734.