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. Bewick, (283) note.

First sentence: "Of the whale, properly so called, there are no fewer than seven different kinds; all distinguished from each other by their external figure, or internal conformation."

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, 290

Osborne Coll., 831