HISTORIAE AEGYPTI NATURALIS PARS PRIMA. Qua continentur rerum AEgyptiarum libri quatuor. Opus postumum, nunc primum ... editum. (Pars secunda, sive, De plantis AEgypti liber auctus et emendatus ... Cum observationibus & notis Joannis Veslingii ... Accedunt ejusdem J. Veslingii paræneses ad rem herbariam & vindiciæ opobalsami by ALPINUS, Prospero; VESLINGIUS, Joannes - 1735

Lugduni Batavorum: Gerardum Potvliet, 1735. First Edition. Hardcover. Some mold spotting to the rear board which lightly affects a few of the rear pages. A little wrinkling to the pages but generally a clean copy with crisp plates. Near Fine. Small quarto (6" x 8") in contemporary vellum. Two volumes bound in one. Illustrated with 102 copper-engraved plates of animals and plants. RERUM AEGYPTIARUM [xx], 248, (12) pages. PLANTIS AEGYPTI [viii], 306, [24] pages. Two plates from part one misbound in the second, plant part, but it makes sense since these are botanical plates. (Hunt 164, Nissen 20 for Plantis Aegypti). This work combines two of Alpinus’s major contributions from his exploration to Egypt as physician and avid naturalist. The first part of this work is published here for the first time and is often referred to as Rerum AEgyptiarum. Alpinus had received his training in medicine at Padua and eventually became director of the Botanical Garden. His meticulous and copious notes and collections that he made wherever he touched ground during his travels to and in Egypt resulted in a number of publications. This is the third, which deals with botany as well as natural history of animals. Although the botanical information here, the first scientific study of Egyptian plants, was first published in 1592, the present posthumous work has been supplemented with notes and observations of Veslingi. (Pritzel, 113)

Prospero Alpinus (also known as Prosper Alpini, Prospero Alpinio, and Prosper Alpin) spent three years in Egypt. His DE MEDICINA EGYPTIORUM, first published in 1591, is said to contain the first account of the coffee plant published in Europe. The same work introduced the banana and baobab to Europeans.