The Genera Vermium exemplified by Various Specimens of the Animals contained in the Orders of the Intestina et Mollusca Linnaei. [Parts 1 and 2].

Bookseller Notes

James Barbut (c.1711-1791) was a naturalist and painter, and exhibited several paintings at the Royal Academy of Art between 1777 and 1786, in which accurate depictions of marine life predominate. Though relatively unknown now, his reputation in his own time was such that he was able to engage the pre-eminent engravers of the day - James Newton, Thomas Woodman and Henry Mutlow - for this edition, and include, amongst his long list of subscribers, Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society. Barbut's whole-hearted admiration for Linnaeus is clear from the outset, 'though certain persons have taken the liberty to criticize the works of this wonderful man, they are much inferior to him in brilliancy of wit and fidelity of judgement, as a glow worm is to the evening star' (page iii); and though he opens with an apology for his reliance on literary sources in the absence first-hand experience of certain specimens, he continues 'let us take a nearer view of them, and our admiration will increase as our ignorance wears away; and the mind shall become illumined.'Barbut himself is known to have applied the hand-colouring to at least some copies. (Damkaer (D.) 'The copepodologist's cabinet' American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 2002)