The White China Pheasant, from A Natural History of Birds: illustrated with a hundred and one copper plates, curiously engraven from the life: THE FIRST BIRD BOOK TO INCLUDE COLOR PLATES

London: Printed for the Author, 1737. First edition.

1737 THE BLACK AND WHITE PHEASANT, FROM THE FIRST BIRD BOOK TO INCLUDE COLOR PLATES HANDCOLORED BY THE AUTHOR AND HIS DAUGHTER.

9x11 1/4 inches handcolored engraving from Eleazar Albin's Natural History of Birds. Bright, bold colors, small crease to lower right corner not affecting image; heavy paper, very good.

ELEAZAR ALBIN (1690 – 1742) was an English naturalist and watercolorist illustrator who wrote and illustrated a number of books including A Natural History of English Insects (1720), A Natural History of Birds (1731–38) and The Natural History of Spiders and other Curious Insects (1736). Nothing is known of Albin's early life, though he may have been German-born; he claimed to have been in Jamaica in 1701. In 1708 he is known to have been married and living in Piccadilly, London. Albin taught watercolor painting before being instructed in natural history by silk weaver and naturalist Joseph Dandridge. A Natural History of Birds has colored engravings by Albin and his daughter Elizabeth Albin. In that book Albin writes "As for the paintings, they are all done from life, with all the exactness I could either with my own hand, or my daughter's, whom I have taught to draw and paint after the life". This was the first book on birds to include color plates. Fewer than 100 copies were printed, accounting for its rarity.

The Nicobar pigeon THE BLACK AND WHITE or silver pheasant (Lophura nycthemera) is a species of pheasant found in forests, mainly in mountains, of mainland Southeast Asia, and eastern and southern China,