[Mycology]:

$15,000 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

[EXTENSIVE COLLECTION OF ORIGINAL HANDCOLORED DRAWINGS OF MUSHROOMS]. A handsome series of original handcolored drawings of mushrooms, with several species drawn from different angles and labeled in manuscript on each leaf. These beautiful watercolors depict both edible and poisonous mushrooms. Most are accompanied by a caption in pencil indicating the binomial Latin name and a reference to the mushrooms in the monograph of François Simon Cordier's LES CHAMPIGNONS DE LA FRANCE, first published in 1870. Each plate is numbered, as is each species on the plate. Species are systematically grouped together, creating a series of plates with one genus or another. All told, it is an impressive work, possibly a series of illustrations for a book, or simply the work of an avid amateur with a firm grounding in the taxonomy of mushrooms.

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