Title vignette.

Vignettes on front and back covers.

An abridgment from The system of natural history by M. de Buffon (Alnwick : Davison, 1814), with illustrations by T. Bewick; cf. Hugo, T. The Bewick collector, (283)--note.

Imprint date from Osborne Coll., cited below; Hugo (297)--note, gives date as ca. 1814.

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.

Gumuchian 1566

Osborne Coll. I,208

Freeman, R. B. British natural history books 2764

Hugo, T. Bewick collector (284)