| Description | 1634, first edition, small folio, 20 pages + 316 (paginated 326) and 4 pages of woodcuts, title within double lines surrounding a woodcut of bees and a large beehive, text in Latin, profusely illustrated with woodcuts throughout text including butterflies, moths, bees, dragonflies, crickets, grasshoppers and many others, old sheep full leather rather worn, hinges weakened, Thomas Coates, London (Lisney 4), This is the first book dealing almost exclusively with entomology to be published in England. Moffet, a Londoner born in 1553, studied medicine at Cambridge and compiled the Theatrum Insectorum from works by Gesner, Wootton and Penny but also added his own observations. After his death in 1604 the manuscript was held by his family until the book was eventually published by Sir Theodore Mayenne in 1634. An English edition was published in 1658. |
