Jules Michelet (1798-1874) French, The Bird (1870). 

Size: 9 3/4 X 6 3/4 in. 

"The Bird" is the first volume of a trilogy - The Bird, The Insect, The Sea - by Jules Michelet and was originally written in French and titled “L’Oiseau” - “The Bird”. It was first published by Meline, Cans et Campagnie in Belgium in 1840 and the French edition was published in 1856. Michelet (1798 - 1874) was a French historian best known for his multi-volume Histoire de France, and he used the term “Renaissance” (meaning a rebirth in French) as a clear break away from the Middle Ages. He was an ardent politician, and later on he ventured into natural history, a subject new to him, and he treated L’Oiseau from the point of view of pantheism, rather than a scientific perspective. Pantheism was a philosophical and religious belief that reality, the universe, and nature are identical to a supreme being, and the world is constantly expanding and creating, and it has done that since the beginning of time. The book has five raised bands, gilt compartments with gilt lettering and gilt devices on the spine, gilt-ruled borders and gilt devices on the covers, dark-grained leather, bevelled edges, pale yellow endpapers with the owners’ names and date on the front flyleaf (Gertrude Weadon and Lewis Weadon 1917), the half-title is surrounded by a wreath and the title page says the book has 210 illustrations by Giacomelli, the book is a new edition revised, and it was published by T Nelson and Sons in London, Edinburgh, and New York in 1870. There’s a three-page Translator’s Preface which says W H Davenport Adams was the translator, then two pages of Contents (ix - x), a two-page List of Illustrations (xi  - xii), 340 pages of text, an Analysis of Subjects from 341 to 345 and an Index that runs to 349, and all the edges are gilt. Subjects in the book include Aquatic birds, Frigate birds, Tropical regions, Raptores (that’s how it’s spelled in the book), migrations, and the nest - bird architecture - among others. The book measures 9 3/4 x 6 3/4 inches wide and is in very good condition. The binding is tight and the pages and text are very clean, as are the illustrations, with light rubbing at the the edges, offset on the title page and frontis, and there are brown spots just on the front and rear endpapers.