Lyon, Henri Georg [for the Muséum d'Histoire naturelle de Lyon], 1886. Large 4to (37.4 x 28.0 cm). Half-title, title page, 26 pp.; eight fine lithographed plates, including three in chromolithography, finished by hand. Original printed wrappers with title on front wrapper and spine.

A very rare work, with fine, large plates. This copy being an excessively rare, separately published preprint or offprint. This work was also published as the first part of Volume 4 of the Muséum's Archives (and then marked as such on the first text leaf), but it predates the "usual" publication date (1887) given on the wrappers of the whole Archives volume. This work deals with extant species. The author, the French medical doctor, Egyptologist, and zoologist Louis Charles Émile Lortet (1836-1909), however, is perhaps best-known for his palaeontological publications, and his works on fish. "Lortet's ... lavishly illustrated herpetological monograph Observations sur les Tortues Terrestres et Paladines du Bassin de la Méditerranée. (1887 [Sic]), includes the detailed description and illustration of nine species of turtles and tortoises, with information on coloration, distribution, habits, and reproduction. The eight lithographed and partly colored plates are among the finest ever produced of turtles. These include the first published illustrations of Testudo kleinmanni" (Adler). The suggestions, by another book dealer, that there should be 44 text pages, and that the coloured plates are entirely hand-coloured, are both wrong. Uncut. Skilful repairs to the wrapper; faint staining to the plates' fore margins; otherwise, an excellent, clean copy. Adler III, pp. 152-153; Cat. BM(NH) p. 1181. Not in Nissen ZBI.