ELLIS, John.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Essai sur l'histoire naturelle des corallines, et d'autres productions marines du même genre, First edition in French of the Natural History of the Corallines (1755), Ellis's beautifully illustrated and seminal overview of coral reefs; all the plates with contemporary hand colouring.John Ellis (c.1710-1776) was a pioneering marine zoologist who focused his studies on "particularly unfamiliar marine animals such as the zoophytes" (ODNB), of which he was the first to argue that they are in fact animal, not plant, life. Under a microscopic lens, he observed that, "in many of them, [their] Texture was such, as seemed to indicate their being more of an animal, than vegetable Nature" (p. vii, English edition). Ellis invented the "Ellis microscope", which is particularly suited for the observation of aquatic life, and he "concluded that micro-organisms caused putrefaction - some eighty years before Pasteur, to whom the discovery is usually attributed" (ODNB). He was also a close correspondent of the "father of modern taxonomy", Carl Linnaeus (1707-1788), who described Ellis as a "bright star of natural history"."Ellis's zoophyte descriptions and professionally drawn engravings, and his scientific approach, were outstanding" (ODNB). They are particularly striking in Essai sur l'histoire naturelle des corallines, the author's longest lifetime publication. Current rising temperatures and pollution levels pose an existential threat to coral reefs, diminishing their effectiveness as regu

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.