Bucquoy, M. E. J. and P. Dautzenberg and G. F. Dollfus
Les mollusques marins du Roussillon. Tomes I - II. [Complete].
Paris, Baillière, et chez les auteurs Dautzenberg à Paris and Buquoy à Perpignan, 1882-1898. Two parts in four (two text parts, two atlases). Thick 8vo (24.0 x 17.3 cm). 1454 pp. [570; 884]; 165 plates including 66 mounted real photographs or phototypes by Berthaud. Uniform blue buckram; spines with gilt title. Original printed wrappers bound in.
The single most important contribution to the marine malacology of the French-Mediterranean coasts. Well-illustrated and containing extensive synonymies, as well as descriptions of new taxa. Published over a long period in two parts, dealing with the gastropods and bivalves respectively, and both consisting of a text volume and an atlas. The first, for the gastropods, was unusually illustrated with mounted original photos. The bivalve atlas has phototype plates. Authors are the French medical doctor, botanist and malacologist Eugène Jules Bucqouy (1837-1904), the French malacologist Gustave Frédéric Dolfuss (1850-1931), and the Belgian malacologist Philippe Dautzenberg (1849-1935). "One of Europe's most outstanding collectors was Philippe Dautzenberg, of Ixelles, near Brussels. Heir to a fortune in the carpet industry he could afford to spend a great deal of money on shells and conchological literature. A born collector, Dautzenberg accumulated specimens with a zeal and discernment rarely equalled; and by 1914 it was estimated that his cabinets contained thirty thousand species... with E. Bucquoy and G. F. Dollfus [he] wrote a large work on the marine molluscs of the Roussillon, South France, generally recognised as the best available account of western Mediterranean molluscs" (Dance). Provenance: stamp of the American malacologist Richard Irwin Johnson (1925-2020) in the top margin of the half-titles. Fascicule 14, covering the first 23 pp. of the bivalve section is bound in in photocopy; however, the original printed part is inserted separately too. A few running titles in the bivalve atlas shaved, a few leaves in the gastropod atlas with some light spotting, or margins a bit chipped, but all the photos good. Otherwise very good, clean. Cat. BM(NH) p. 277; Dance, S. P. (1986) A History of Shell collecting, p.165. Not in Nissen.