[AUSTRALIAN INSECTS] Orthoptera Descripta et Depicta.

a T. de Charpentier. Cum tabulis LX coloratis. Leipzig : Leopold Voss, 1841-1845. Quarto (320 x 250 mm), contemporary blue-papered boards (corners bumped and worn, paper along spine a little chipped and worn), a large printed label to the upper board with imprint date of 1842 (probably from an original wrapper – the work was issued in 10 parts); title leaf, pp. iv, [2 contents and table of plates], [114 explanations of the plates in German, numbered 1-60], followed by 60 hand-coloured plates of grasshoppers; text pages partly unopened, light foxing to the endpapers and text throughout but the plates are generally excellent and clean, with some light foxing to the last half dozen, all with plate number and scientific name written in by hand in pencil, in an early German hand. Collated and complete.

A rare work with beautiful hand-coloured plates of exotic Orthoptera by the German geologist and entomologist Toussaint de Charpentier (1779-1847), which primarily aims to depict either newly discovered species of grasshoppers, crickets, stick insects, and praying mantises, or ones not depicted in a published format previously. It includes four new specimens from Australia, which are all fully described and illustrated: Podacanthus unicolor, Bacillus australis, Coryphistes rhodoptilus, and Coryphistes cyanopterus. The natural habitats of the other specimens include Java, Borneo, Ceylon, Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Cape of Good Hope, and Benguela (Angola). Charpentier had planned a larger work, but only finished the first 10 parts; the illustrations for the remaining 40 plates, which had already been completed but were never published, are now in the Zoological Museum at Koenigsberg.

Trove locates copies in four Australian libraries (SLSA; University of Melbourne Library; CSIRO Library; Museums Victoria Library)

Nissen ZBI 875.