Title vignette.

Vignettes on front and back covers.

"Thirty-five engravings on wood"--t.p.

First sentence: "The land tortoise is found from one to five feet in length, from the end of the snout to the extremety of the tail; and from five to eighteen inches across the back."

One of 7 chapbooks issued by Davison as an abridgement of Buffon's "System of natural history," an itself abridged English translation of his "Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière": Davison, 1814; the chapbooks dated by Tattersfield "around 1819."

The woodcuts have been attributed to Thomas Bewick and his workshop by Hugo (in Bewick collector, p. 109-110); Tattersfield claims nothing in the chapbooks to be by Bewick (in Thomas Bewick, v. 2, p. 935) naming as the probable engraver Isaac Nicholson, a former Bewick apprentice.

The 7 chapbooks sometimes issued together under title: A cabinet of natural history.

Hugo, T. Bewick collector, 292

Osborne Coll., 209

Tattersfield, N. Thomas Bewick, v. 2, p. 934-935

Wood, C. A. Vertebrate zoology, p. 237