One Hundred and Twenty Copper Plates of English Moths and Butterflies Representing Their Changes into the Caterpillar, Chrysalis, and Fly States and the Plants, Flowers, and Fruits, Wheron They Feed. Coloured with great Exactness from the Subjects themselves.

WILKES, Benjamin.

Item Number: 112674

London: Printed for Benjamin White, 1773.

Rare edition of one the most important works on British butterflies and moths. Quarto, bound in full contemporary calf with gilt titles and tooling to the spine, decorative ruling to the panels stamped in blind, illustrated with 120 exquisite hand-colored engraved plates depicting the development butterflies and moths with the plants on which the feed after drawings by George Ehret and Jacob van Huysum. With a natural history of the insects and plants, index, and the list of subscribers gleaned from the original 1747-79 edition including Joseph Dandridge who assisted Wilkes and gave him open access to his private collection of entomological specimen. In very good condition with the hand colored-plates exceptionally clean and bright. Rare and desirable. 

After joining the Aurelian Society of Entomologists of London, 18th-century artist and naturalist Benjamin Wilkes began to study entomology spending his leisure time collecting, studying and drawing the adults, larvae, pupae and parasitoids (Tachinidae and Ichneumonidae) of Lepidoptera, assisted by collector Joseph Dandridge. Convinced that nature would be his 'best instructor' as to color and form in art, he worked for ten years to compile the notes and drawings for the present volume which ran three editions.