EXTREMELY RARE! HANDCOLORED - COPPER PLATE ENGRAVING on HAND-LAID CHAINLINKED PAPER Printed and Published in 1782 VOLUME III - FIRST EDITION of Dru DRURY’s ILLUSTRATIONS of NATURAL HISTORY Exotic Insects Engravings - Handcoloring by MOSES HARRIS and OTHERS This ORIGINAL Print is One of 50 Plates Published in Volume III of DRU DRURY’S Extremely Rare 1782 Treatise ILLUSTRATIONS of NATURAL HISTORY Wherein are exhibited upwards of two hundred and forty figures of EXOTIC INSECTS, according to their different genera, Very few of which have hitherto been figured by any author, Being engraved and coloured from nature, with the Greatest accuracy, and under the author’s own inspection; on Fifty Copper-Plates; with a particular description of Each Insect, interspersed with remarks and reflection on the nature and properties of many of them SUPERB and DELICATE HANDCOLORING! This ORIGINAL and RARE Dru DRURY Plate was ENGRAVED and HAND-COLORED by the Highly Acclaimed Engraver and Painter, MOSES HARRIS (1730-ca1788) or Other Creators of the Fine Plates in Volume III NOTE: A Facsimile of (1) the Title Page and (2) the text of Drury’s Original 1782 Descriptions of the various species on this plate will be provided to the individual who acquires this rare item. Many of the handcolored figures in Drury’s three-volume work represented species that he described using the Binomial System prescribed by his friend and contemporary, Carolus Linnaeus, in the tenth edition of Systema Naturae published in 1758! Drury’s descriptions were provided in English in the left-hand column, and the French equivalent in the adjacent right-hand column of the text. This bilingual English/French format, designed to reduce ambiguity and confusion, continues even today in the INTERNATIONAL CODE of ZOOLOGICAL NOMENCLATURE DIMENSIONS/CONDITION Page is about 8.5 inches X 11 inches; Plate Block is well defined, and except as may be shown in the image is free of marks and foxing. This ENGRAVING is GUARANTEED to be an ORIGINAL Page from the VERY RARE 1782 Drury Treatise! Print is Over 240 Years Old! Drury produced and published a total of three (3) volumes of ILLUSTRATIONS of NATURAL HISTORY. Volume I was published in 1770, Volume II in 1773, and Volume III in 1782. Moses HARRIS engraved and painted all plates of Volumes I and II and most but not all of the plates in Volume III. Each Drury Volume Contained 50 Handcolored Copper-Engraved plates on Hand-laid Chainlinked Paper. All Original DRURY Volumes are EXTREMELY RARE! No complete First Edition volumes of this work have been available anywhere on the internet for nearly a decade! Drury’s original work was revised by J.O. Westwood and republished (1835-1842) some 30 years after Drury’s death, by Henry G. Bohn Co., London. This revision included three volumes, with all 150 plates handcolored on handwove paper. The text for this revision was published without the French component of Drury’s original, and offered technical clarification by Westwood of Drury’s taxonomic analyses, but without access to Drury’s specimens (which had been sold and subsequently disappeared after Drury’s death). Plates from Westwood’s mid-1800’s revised work, credited to Drury, are available on occasion, and the entire volume...itself very rare... may command a price in excess of $10,000! * Some NOTES about the Author/Collector - DRU DRURY Dru Drury (1725-1803) was a British entomologist who was president of the Society of Entomologists of London from 1780-82 and a prominent member of the Aurelian Society. He was also a prolific collector of insect specimens and his personal collection, which he created over a period of some 30 years, contained an estimated 11,000 specimens; about half of which were beetles, butterflies and moths, and an estimated 2,000 of which were species of Great Britain. Most of the specimens in this massive assemblage...undoubtedly the largest collection of its kind anywhere in the world....were purchased (for a sum that varied according to the size of the insect) from those who collected for him on their personal travels around the globe, and were “exotic” species. Dru Drury was a silversmith and jeweler, a profession he inherited from his father in 1748. He was sufficiently successful in this trade to be appointed goldsmith to Queen Charlotte (wife of George III), to provide for a wife and their seventeen offspring, and to support his hobbies (gardening & winemaking) and entomological passions as well. In 1805, two years after his death, Drury’s collection of specimens on which he spent an estimated £4,000, was sold at auction for a modest sum of £614. Many of the specimens were purchased by Drury’s friends, William Kirby and Edward Donovan, notable entomologists in their own right, who then proceeded to sell Drury’s exotic insects through catalogues! All of Drury’s specimens were dispersed or disappeared over time, and essentially no specimens upon which he described his species in the three-volume “Opus” of 1770-1782 survived for first-hand analysis by Westwood when he prepared the revised edition of Dru Drury’s “Illustration of Natural History” in 1835-42! (Review by R.C. Anderson from details extracted from several sources.) * Some NOTES about the Engraver/Artist - MOSES HARRIS MOSES HARRIS (1730-ca1788) was a highly accomplished artist, engraver and painter, although much about his personal life remains unknown. He was a contemporary of Dru Drury and other 18th century British entomologists, and like his father before him and Drury, too, he was an active member of Aurelian Society--a group of entomologists who named their association after a latin term--aureolus--meaning golden, in reference to the impressive and golden case unique to the pupal chrysalids of certain butterflies. The plates Harris produced for the periodical, The Aurelian,from 1758-1766 and on occasion thereafter until 1775, were outstanding, unsurpassed representations of nature! In addition to the outstanding plates he produced for Drury’s Illustrations of Natural History, he published an excellent little handbook The English Lepidoptera, or, the Aurelian’s Pocket Companion (1775, and others to 1782), outstanding plates for William Curtis’ The Botanical Magazine, and William Martyn’s two-volume New Dictionary of Natural History(1785). Essentially ALL PLATES Produced by MOSES HARRIS are VALUABLE, HIGHLY COLLECTIBLE Prints! (Review by R.C. Anderson from details extracted from several sources.) This VERY RARE PRINT is an ORIGINAL, ANTIQUARIAN Hand-Colored Copper-Plate Engraving on Hand-Laid Chainlinked Paper!

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