Dresser, Henry Eeles.

9 volumes including index and supplement, 4to (316 x 245mm.), additional titles, 723 lithographed plates after J.G. Keulemans, Joseph Wolf, and E. Neale, all but one coloured by hand, including the second plate of the little gull in volume 8, contemporary half morocco gilt, top edges gilt, binding rubbed at edges

Anker 120; Fine Bird Books, p.72; Nissen IVB 267; Wood p.324; Zimmer p.177

the first complete work on the avifauna of europe since that of gould (see lot 23). Dresser has included the whole of the Western Palaearctic Region, thus adopting natural rather than political boundaries. “This region comprises the whole of continental Europe to the Ural range, Scandinavia, Spitzbergen, the British Isles, Iceland, the Faeroes, the Azores, Madeira, and the Canary Isles, a comparatively narrow strip of North Africa, reaching to the border of the desert, Asia Minor (excluding the Jordan valley, which is essentially Ethiopian), and the Caucasus” (Introduction).