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Item #38725 Moths and butterflies of the United States East of the Rocky Mountains. Sherman Foote DENTON.
Moths and butterflies of the United States East of the Rocky Mountains
Moths and butterflies of the United States East of the Rocky Mountains
Moths and butterflies of the United States East of the Rocky Mountains

Moths and butterflies of the United States East of the Rocky Mountains

Boston: Bradlee Whidden, 1898-1900. 2 volumes, large octavo. (8 5/8 x 6 3/4 inches). With 107 hand-coloured direct transfers of moths and butterflies on 56 plates, and approximately 400 additional photographic illustrations.

Publisher's half red morocco and marbled paper covered boards, spines with raised bands, gilt tooled in with butterfly decorations in each compartment, gilt edges.

A fine copy of this remarkable nature-printed work, one of 500 numbered sets.

A sumptuous colour-plate book on the butterflies of the United States east of the Rockies. The colour plates in this work are quite remarkable, as, whilst the bodies are hand-coloured engravings, the wings are impressions from the actual insects' wings pressed onto the paper. In the preface Denton describes his labours as he travelled widely in search of specimens: "The colored plates, or Nature Prints, used in the work, are direct transfers from the insects themselves; that is to say, the scales of the wings of the insects are transferred to paper while the bodies are printed from engravings and afterward colored by hand... I have had to make over fifty thousand of these transfers for the entire edition, not being able to get anyone to help me who would do the work as I desired it done... I will say, however, that there was never a laborer more in love with his work."

Bennett p.33; McGrath p.177; Nissen ZBI 1079; Reese Stamped with a National Character 107.

Item #38725

Price: $3,250.00

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