Botany.- Levant.- Jaubert (Hippolyte François, Comte de) Illustrationes Plantarum Orientalium, 5 vol., 500 engraved plates, lacking map, extra-illustrated with 10 additional maps and 2 engravings from other works, ex-library copy with excisions from various leaves and traces of ink stamps, some foxing and browning, very occasional light marginal worming, contemporary calf-backed boards, rubbed, [Nissen BBI 985], 4to, Paris, 1842-57.

⁂ Rare at auction with only one other example traced in the past 25 years.

This fine work owes its origin to an expedition made in 1839 by the French politician and botanist Count François Hippolyte Jaubert (1798-1874) and his friend Charles F.M. Texier (1802-1871) the archaeologist to Asia Minor. On his return Jaubert decided to publish illustrations of the new and little known species of plants he had collected with some collected by earlier travellers... The best botanical artists of Paris - J. and F. Gontier E. Lesèble de Ligniville Maubert Riocreux Willy Mlle. Champeaux Mesdames Gouffé Hublier and Spach - were employed for the plates... All beautifully and accurately drawn and engraved. Historically the most interesting are a number by Claude Aubriet... Nicolas Robert and Pierre Redouté. Jaubert planned and directed the work and even wrote part of the text but most of this was done by Edouard Spach." (Journal Soc. Bibl. Nat. Hist. I 9).

This copy does not have the large folding map but instead has 10 maps inserted from another work.